Happy Mother's Day

About once a year my mother asks, "What are you writing these days?"  It is a serious question coming from a woman who has always made me laugh.  Usually, however, whenever I try to explain to my mother what I have written, I get bogged down in the language itself . . . just like I used to do in grade school when she would ask, "Do you have any homework?"  (My mother taught in grade school for 42 years and was my kindergarten teacher, so school was an inescapably serious endeavor.)

My mother was there when I began writing in earnest (and with great seriousness) at the age of twelve.  I soon had a manual typewriter and churned out stories for my friends, as well as creating entire magazines from scratch, which I also illustrated.  I wrote school plays, funny poems and spent, as I recall, one summer whittling limericks (all clean) that eventually filled an entire notebook.

Still, it's safe to say that my mother hasn't even read 1% of all the material I've written these past forty years (but in fact, no one else has read 1% of it either!).

And although my mother doesn't even know I write poems (to my knowledge she has no idea what I write) . . . I did pen this one some months back and had planned to give it to her on Mother's Day.  But I forgot to send it.  So . . . I send it to her here.  (Although, my mom doesn't read my blogs either, so what am I saying?) 

Share it with your own mother if you like.  Just remember where you saw it first!

My Mother's Arms

Then they were young and lithe and strong
When my body was her baby
And the full length of me a song
Singing her only child.

Then as they firmed in adolescent's strife
They coaxed, and taught, and barred the door.
In short, they birthed me into life
And gave to me the world, and more.

Then they were tired and tiring
And deserving of rest,
Having completed those tasks
Which once had blessed.

And at the last, mottled with age,
Yet supple and supine,
When they have become too weak to bear her home--
I shall give her mine.