Mother’s Day
Still I struggle to rise, breathing in the quiet,
trying to believe in patience
as I teach the child to make the bread, to mix the flour and water,
feed the starter so the yeast can grow, keep going
even days after it’s been fed. As something fed me
all those years ago — maybe the fact of her will
trapped into screaming or in the aria from Carmen,
the record playing Maria Callas again and again, her pivotal
and triumphant No. How did she learn that
and when, with her hours of waiting tables,
her two-fingered typing the daily menus, how
she put the camellia between her teeth and began,
wildly, to sing.
Why did I doubt
that reasonable anger, or her release? Still
I arranged my life to answer hers, every year
sending with a vengeance
the large bouquet, as if to remind her of what I had.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Bad birds
are at it again, an endless taking-over
of the bluebirds’ house, overnight
tossing their jumble of sticks over the feathered
lining the better birds have wrought,
pecking tiny holes in the robin’s three eggs
not hidden well enough in the purple-thick clematis.
What a ruckus, what destruction
in their greedy song. How many times
he has chased them out, dismantling each
nest after nest. And no sign
of the good birds, who are giving up.
The time for the first hatching is over.
My love’s out there day after day: now midsummer
and it’s almost lost, he says, gambling for one more
pair, the hope of another year.
*
The little birds have nothing to say,
scrambling at the feeder
in their riot of push and shove.
And all for thistle, that slight seed.
They have to eat so much of it
for strength in what’s to come.
Already the goldfinches’ yellow has turned
to dun and ash.
Why in October do I love them so?
No more that summer marriage
when green and yellow merged
in the flicker of leaves. Nothing distinguishes them
against the graying bark. Or from the sky’s threat
taking down all the colors of the world.