I: Our Mothers

Nothing favors the day.

Patients held under the sheets

by their fugitive rhythms—

most of them

past ambition—

curtains half drawn,

observation lamps left

off or skillfully dimmed.

The women smelling

of soap and chloroform.

One says how feeble her

mother is—latching

the doors on fantastic hazards,

repeatedly patting

the cold stove—patrolling

the cellar stairs

for steps or the trigger

of uninvited light.

One asks

what any of us are

when our mothers break

our hearts—as if

that were the issue.

The others look down,

images brimming—

flat hands

in their laps softening

like the circle of sick around them.

II: Dream

You hate miracles but you enter

this one, willing to be deceived.

The frame houses—their clapboards

glinting like glass, uniform pickets trim,

the junipers marking the way to porches

and street-side passages in.

Your caught breath sears—the morning air

uncertain as your quivering lip.

You say “mother” when you see her,

“mother” as if she were there

wrapped in green gingham, sweeping the walk

along the road you dreamed you wanted.

“Mother,” “mother,” although she won’t answer,

although her hair’s the absent color of her skin,

although the only shadow under the sun is yours

looking back at the range of her doing

when she ushered you past a collection

of stones on the wrong path home.

III: The Natural

When I saw her I brightened

wondering what

if she weren’t mine

would I love her

say love again

would I love her

could I still

imagine her head

pushed free

then breathing

as I took my breath

all the cells of me

pumped up

in the expectation

she’d be the vowel

the open note

the song sung

in my own idiom.