137 Mother poems

I hate you, How the children plead At first sight—

A month, sweet Little-ones, is past Since your dear Mother went away, And she tomorrow will return; Tomorrow is the happy day. O blessed tidings! thoughts of joy! The eldest heard with steady glee; Silent he stood; then laughed amain, And shouted, ‘Mother, come to me!’ Louder and louder did he shout, With witless hope to bring her near! ‘Nay, patience! patience, little boy; Your tender mother cannot hear.’ I told of hills, and far-off towns, And long, long vales to travel through; He listened, puzzled, sore perplexed, But he submits; what can he do? No strike disturbs his sister’s breast; She wars not with the mystery Of time and distance, night and day; The bonds of our humanity. Her joy is like an instinct, joy Of kitten, bird, or summer fly; She dances, runs without an aim, She chatters in her ecstasy. Her brother now takes up the note, And echoes back his sister’s glee; They hug the infant in my arms, As if to force his sympathy. Then, settling into fond discourse, We rested in the garden bower; While sweetly shone the evening sun In his departing hour. We told o’er all that we had done, Our rambles by the swift brook’s side Far as the willow-skirted pool, Where two fair swans together glide. We talked of change, of winter gone, Of green leaves on the hawthorn spray, Of birds that build their nests and sing. And all ‘since Mother went away!’ To her these tales they will repeat, To her our new-born tribes will show, The goslings green, the ass’s colt, The lambs that in the meadow go. — But see, the evening star comes forth! To bed the children must depart; A moment’s heaviness they feel, A sadness at the heart: ’Tis gone — and in a merry fit They run up stairs in gamesome race; I, too, infected by their mood, I could have joined the wanton chase. Five minutes past — and, O the change! Asleep upon their beds they lie; Their busy limbs in perfect rest, And closed the sparkling eye.

Tonight, I dressed my son in astronaut pajamas, kissed his forehead and tucked him in. I turned on his night-light and looked for you in the closet and under the bed. I told him you were nowhere to be found, but I could smell your breath, your musty fur. I remember all your tricks: the jagged shadows on the wall, click of your claws, the hand that hovered just above my ankles if I left them exposed. Since I became a parent I see danger everywhere— unleashed dogs, sudden fevers, cereal two days out of date. And even worse than feeling so much fear is keeping it inside, trying not to let my love become so tangled with anxiety my son thinks they're the same. When he says he's seen your tail or heard your heavy step, I insist that you aren't real. Soon he'll feel too old to tell me his bad dreams. If you get lonely after he's asleep, you can always come downstairs. I'll be sitting at the kitchen table with the dishes I should wash, crumbs I should wipe up. We can drink hot tea and talk about the future, how hard it is to be outgrown.

Here where the rooms are dryly still Who is this dustily asleep While juicy children run the field? Where is her ever deepening well Whose buckets to a fullness dip For needs compassion must fulfill? Like freshets they themselves may yield A little to the turned up cup, But death is in the long dry spell. Run children, run, the light grows dull, And she who keeps the well must sleep, And rain is unpredictable. December 1951

Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

She rarely made us do it— we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased that some day we’d train our children right and not end up like her, after every meal stuck with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring. The one chore she spared us: gummy plates in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas, globs of egg and gravy. Or did she guard her place at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss of the magnolia, the school traffic humming. Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon, delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

She sat on a shelf, her breasts two bellies on her poked-out belly, on which the navel looked like a sucked-in mouth— her knees bent and apart, her long left arm raised, with the large hand knuckled to a bar in the ceiling— her right hand clamping the skinny infant to her chest— its round, pale, new, soft muzzle hunting in the brown hair for a nipple, its splayed, tiny hand picking at her naked, dirty ear. Twisting its little neck, with tortured, ecstatic eyes the size of lentils, it looked into her severe, close-set, solemn eyes, that beneath bald eyelids glared—dull lights in sockets of leather. She twitched some chin-hairs, with pain or pleasure, as the baby-mouth found and yanked at her nipple; its pink-nailed, jointless fingers, wandering her face, tangled in the tufts of her cliffy brows. She brought her big hand down from the bar with pretended exasperation unfastened the little hand, and locked it within her palm— while her right hand with snag-nailed forefinger and short, sharp thumb, raked the new orange hair of the infant’s skinny flank— and found a louse, which she lipped, and thoughtfully crisped between broad teeth. She wrinkled appreciative nostrils which, without a nose, stood open—damp holes above the poke of her mouth. She licked her lips, flicked her leather eyelids— then, suddenly flung up both arms and grabbed the bars overhead. The baby's scrabbly fingers instantly caught the hair— as if there were metal rings there— in her long, stretched armpits. And, as she stately swung, and then proudly, more swiftly slung herself from corner to corner of her cell— arms longer than her round body, short knees bent— her little wild-haired, poke-mouthed infant hung, like some sort of trophy, or decoration, or shaggy medal— shaped like herself—but new, clean, soft and shining on her chest.

She came home running back to the mothering blackness deep in the smothering blackness white tears icicle gold plains of her face She came home running She came down creeping here to the black arms waiting now to the warm heart waiting rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face She came down creeping She came home blameless black yet as Hagar’s daughter tall as was Sheba’s daughter threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face She came home blameless

the last time i was home to see my mother we kissed exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around us and read separate books i remember the first time i consciously saw her we were living in a three room apartment on burns avenue mommy always sat in the dark i don’t know how i knew that but she did that night i stumbled into the kitchen maybe because i’ve always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed she was sitting on a chair the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through those thousands of panes landlords who rented to people with children were prone to put in windows she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black i’m sure i just hung there by the door i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady she was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by “come here” she said “i’ll teach you a poem:i see the moon the moon sees me god bless the moon and god bless me

We meet—sometimes—between the dry hours, Between clefts in the involuntary plan, Refusing to think of rent or food—how Civic the slick to satisfied from man. And Democratic. A Lucky Strike each, we Sponge each other off, while what's greyed In and grey slinks ashamed down the drain. No need to articulate great restraint, No need to see each other's mouth lip The obvious.Giddy. Fingers garnished With fumes of onions and garlic, I slip Back into my shift, then watch her hands—wordless— Reattach her stockings to the martyred Rubber moons wavering at her garter.