My Mother: 33 Years Later

1

There are places

     garden

     music room

     stove

     dining room

Death bed   her eyes are open   she doesn’t speak

     My sister and I hold up a picture of Frannie the first grandchild

     Mama do you know who this is?

     Fools! Who do you think you’re talking to?

     Oh!   she cried and turned away

My room   she says

     I’ve heard that expression

     I know how you talk

     don’t think I’m so dumb

     hot pants! that’s what you say, you girls!

Bobby and I are walking, arm and arm, across the camp field

Our mothers are behind us. We’re nine years old.

We’re wearing swimming trunks.

                         She says

     look   see the line of soft soft

     hair along their spines

     like down   our little birds

One of the mothers

the mother out of whose body

I easily appeared

Once I remembered her

2

This is what I planned:

To get to the end of our life quickly

And begin again

Everyone is intact   talking

Mother and Father   Mira   Babashka

all of us eating our boiled egg

but the poplar tree on Hoe Avenue

has just been cut down and the Norway maple

is planted in Mahopac

Then

my mother gives me

a vase full of zinnias

“as straight as little Russian soldiers”

Yes

mama

as straight as the second grade

in the P.S. 50 schoolyard

at absolute attention

under its woolen hats

of pink   orange   lavender   yellow