Poetry Monday: Poetry for Mother's Day (freebie)

This Mother's Day will be bittersweet for me.  Sweet, because I have three wonderful children and a terrific husband who will be celebrating the day with me.  Bitter, because it's the first Mother's Day ever where I am unable to phone my mother, send her a gift, or thank her for being wonderful.  I will, of course, spend the day, as I have done every day since she passed away on the 30th of January this year, thinking about her, missing her, and perhaps writing about her.

At my mother's memorial, I grabbed a copy of the poetry book Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I co-authored from her bookshelf, and read a poem from it about how I used to climb into her bed as a young child, and how safe it felt to me (my own children did the same when they were younger...).  I've reprinted that poem below. Of course, I'm not the only one in the world who has lost my mother.  She Wore Emerald Then was released the week of the death of Carolyn’s mother, so the book, which has always been tied to Mother's Day, has a certain poignancy for both of us.  Carolyn and I are going to be running another freebie this year at Amazon.  If you don't already have a copy of She Wore Emerald Then, which features beautiful photography from May Lattanzio, please go and grab a copy for free here:  http://www.amazon.com/She-Wore-Emerald-Then-Reflections-ebook/dp/B00BXPW2XO  anytime from the 5th to the 9th of May (US dates).


If you're a mother, or if you have a mother (and that's all of us, even those of us whose mother is no longer alive), please have a happy Mother's Day, even if that happiness is tinged with longing, because every beautiful moment has a kind of permanence to it, even as it disappears into the transience of time. 

Mother's Bed

In the restless night

when mortality lurks in every shadow

the blanket won’t cover your fear

and morning is a half-forgotten dream

vague and uncertain,

slink into my bed

the pillow holds a mother’s secret

whispered charm

you can sink your head into.

There are no demons here;

no whirlwind of memory and anticipation clouding sleep

only eternal warmth

a shared space

free from the ticking illusion

of time, motion, and change.

Here, where you are always welcome

nothing matters

except this peace

this place

containing every possible now.