Mother's Day
I celebrated Mother’s Day by breaking in
the gardening gloves she gave me – white with
little bunches of carrots, orange and green
and brown, now, at the fingertips, where I dug
to plant celery, cucumber, radishes –
tiny holes where rose bushes were trimmed,
dried red seeds where I stumbled accidentally
into the tomato plants.
My mother tends a mighty garden but,
older now, tucks a few plastic flowers
into the mulch and admires them, always
full blooms, from the kitchen window.
On Mother’s Day she wrote me a poem
(“You make me a mother, after all”)
and told me that I could take any line,
every line, I wanted –
So, mother, the line is this:
“My heart grew fat”
and my heart is tipping the scales,
bursting like a ripe tomato
or a juicy orange,
shining with this love
like the tight blossom of
a yellow-eyed daisy
or the tiny fist of an infant
hanging on to your sure finger,
leading her into the opening world.
(reprinted with thanks from Calliope, 2010)
