Happy Mother’s Day
As I Pondered in Silence after Whitman All these poems all these hungry things and all the women behind them My mother’s mother’s mother was a sailor and her daughter was a witch—healthy solid vital curious amused – and her daughter a nurse and hers a poet and mine a nomad. My beautiful body unfolded from their beautiful bodies and my daughter’s from mine. Even now – looking out on a light May rain – and the lilacs almost at peak – I can feel their moisture smell their scent hear the wars they all made weapons for or bandages or long distracting letters clamor for their sons and daughters. These sailors and witches and nurses will not read my hungry poems. They made their own kind of poems – and fed them too—chickens, jams, cans of cream of something soup. Anybody nurtured from them was so backhandedly the point the making. I would begin with them and not with war – though war was and is the field of their world as much a part of each as the unfolding enfolding folds of their bodies— I would begin with them and the things they made and patched and fed for life, in death, for the body believing in the body and yes the soul too I too am come chanting the chant of their battles I, above all, promote brave women. Sherry Robbins, Happy Mother’s Day!
Sherry Robbins 