Good Girls, Good Mothers
Mothers who had to wear white gloves but wouldn’t
force their daughters to. Mothers who played
field hockey and basketball. Mothers who didn’t know
whether a body was made to hurl
into the world or to be viewed through glass
and dusted daily. Mothers who married
before sex, who were taught nothing,
who knew little of the desire they saw floating
through the air like bubbles. Mothers who
smiled at innuendos but never understood them, even
after their children had begun to learn the languages
of other people’s bodies. Mothers who starved
themselves to fit into narrow-waisted white
wedding dresses they kept forever because they were
supposed to. Mothers who divorced, mothers who
didn’t. Who tried to do the right thing.
Mothers who held their children when they shivered
and broke hairbrushes on their backsides,
laughing out loud as the punishment turned
ridiculous, pieces of plastic and bristles flying
across the bed. Mothers who never joked
about animals, mothers who taught how to cook
and sew, who became nurses instead
of doctors. Mothers who loved snow-capped mountains
and sang songs from The Sound of Music.
Mothers who read books, mothers who relished
plunging their hands into the dark earth to bring forth
tomatoes and green peppers. Mothers who named the birds
then dressed for cocktail parties like a knight
for battles. Ghost mothers standing in fields
on the other side of cancer, waiting to receive us, especially
the ones whose mothers couldn’t love them enough,
the living who fear what happens after, the suffering
and the shamed and those who made mistakes —
which is all who were born into this world,
all who will fall or crash or sigh into the next.
* * * * *
Talking to Animals
If you open my head like a flip top
everything will be a green
horizon, corn and soybeans going
on forever, sky generous enough
to hold every loss as lightly
as a frog caged in gentle fingers
and carried back outside to live.
Barn with a white aluminum roof
that amplifies the rain until
the sound is drenching. Horses
lowering their heads to whuffle
for a carrot held on a flat palm,
eyes of every animal I loved and wanted
to be: dog cat raccoon cardinal swan
cheetah, my favorite
because I craved speed. I suppose
people must be there too but I don’t
think I ever knew them purely, even
my sister who understood so much
about our childhood and died
before me. I want to believe we will meet
on that old farm in the flatlands,
young again and able, this time,
to hear what the animals say back.