Mother’s Day
You remember how, on the way to church,
she would clean your face with a spit bath,
how she stroked your back with tips
of her fingernails until you fell asleep
beside her in the little bedroom
at Grandma’s house. That bedroom all
the two of you had of home.
This day will get you coming or going,
wring out whatever is left of the bittersweet.
It makes a nest for receiving bits of gratitude
that fly in and take off like buntings in springtime.
Mothering is an ephemeral art. You get
the arabesque of motherhood just right
before tripping on the next move.
All of it there when you meet for brunch
with a daughter and son, and, again
in the phone call from another, the firstborn.
Every misstep wrapped in grace, affection
so strong its center holds even as it spins.
***
Horsewoman
The sensation of floating across Grass Mountain,
vegetation chest-high on my mount. Delicate seedheads
swish as they brush against horseflesh, much like
dangling willow branches on a night with a breeze.
I easily transport to a time when I rode on mountain trails
or saddled up to head out across open ranchland. All it takes
is the hay piled beside a barn, a mere whiff of manure,
sight of a horse.
Windmill blades, that rhythmic scrape and hum they make,
carry me back to times we watered at the trough
before starting out where there was no water for miles.
Planted deep, memories of those open sweeps, nothing but
occasional bellows from distant cows, ravens swirling above,
endless skies, rhythm of hooves.
***
Undertow
A peculiar thing about the mind, how it can be doing
one thing, climbing Longs Peak or driving in Denver traffic,
while stirring cake batter or wondering if the garbage is out,
how you can be reading Kierkegaard and suddenly be back
where your girl child sleeps like a cherub, wildly colored
toadstools on the wallpaper.
When the committee meets Monday morning, you are present
but also, in the kitchen on Rock Beach Road, listening to deep,
soulful sound of cello practice.
Strange, how, walking the dog, you can be drying dishes.
Mother washes. Out the kitchen window, clothes flap on the line,
a crow caws from the telephone pole.
It’s a wonder things go as smoothly as they do with Julie Mason’s curls
bouncing in the front row; Dad, home again with too much to drink;
the entire zoo clamoring to break out.
We would like to think world leaders will concentrate on ending wars,
but there’s that fire that took the back part of the house,
fifth-grade teacher who liked to ridicule.
Linda Whittenberg began writing poetry more than twenty years ago, a life-long dream, which finally there was time for in retirement. Her efforts have produced five volumes of poems and another that will be published in 2025. It was poetry that first took her to Ireland where she has travelled many times to attend workshops and find inspiration for poems. She now lives and writes in Colorado.
Great writing!