My Mother
Still she is an other.
My fears make her
remote as a last ridge
rife with veins and caves
(the conceits of veins and caves),
slippery, scary to climb,
her summit crowned in cloud.
Witnessed from death’s distance,
her lovely skirt swaying,
she carries with her her frame,
but I lose her in my mystery.
Still she blooms somewhat,
as if stepping forward from her body
into the character I love
with all my failings.
I try not to falter further,
not to deny in her
her half-fathomed humanness
and make of her another relation —
mother, producer, a kind of partner —
I a male full of males,
of female born.
Mother, you of unswum pools,
your grotto so deep
I shy in the shallows,
I reach across to offer
you my myopic eye,
I lose my footing,
I breaststroke to you,
you a woman full of yourself,
swimming to an inseparation
until with your lost body
you might give me birth again.
* * * * *
Malcah
— noun, queen. Hebrew.
The mother, deprived, needed more than could be provided;
I strained to serve as her first son.
She sang songs from WWI with her father that she sang
again, but who would listen? Not I, clearly her worst son.
Growing old, she grew bereft of earlier selves
and caressed my hand hard. A coerced son,
I put my hand away and kept courteous distance
but still there lay in me a thirst, a sun-
parched need to crawl against who she was,
the urgent, regnant mother, to be a nursed son.
Dead, she lay like a patient awaiting resuscitation
and I stood stupid beside her, the failed surgeon.
What tribute now can I tender
to restore what I did not give her — what reversion?
— None, she comes to say, I am past your laudation,
my Beloved; you are in me always, my averse son, my immersed son, my cursed son.