The last time we visited our mothers was in April. The long, Saskatchewan winter stalled out for the week we were there. Flocks of geese v’d through the clear-blue living skies, clouds as scant as the patches of snow on the prairie fields below. A natural world invisible to my mom, who sadly, last year at the age of ninety, become permanently blind.
She is Learning to Abandon the World: for Mom
She is learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon her.
Already she has given up the moon,
the stars, her mind wrapped
in a quilt of memory,
as the world has taken
her eyesight, her strength.
She has given up on conversation,
preferring silence and her speechless bed.
Every night she gives up anxiety
to chocolate and Celexa.
But morning comes with small
reprieves of oatmeal and springtime.
Outside in clear prairie air,
“Phoebe. Phoebe.” plaintively calls the bird.
“Singing its name,” mom smiles,
remembering.
Outside in the sun, she’s her old
self, her indifference abandoned, warmed
by the rapture of birdsong.
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Update: Langer, Emily. “Linda Pastan, poet of concentrated beauty, dies at 90.” Washington Post, February 1, 2023.
Pastan, Linda. A Dog Runs Through It: Poems. New York: W. N. Norton & Company Inc, 2018. Regular readers know that Linda Pastan constantly inspires me. My poem is modelled after “I am Learning to Abandon the World: for M,” from this, her latest book of poetry, which I have dog-eared. You can read “I am Learning to Abandon the World: for M,” here. But why not support poetry and buy one of her dozen books?
Linda was born in 1932, four years after mom, and raised in New York, although she has lived most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Linda won the Mademoiselle poetry prize—quite the accomplishment as Sylvia Plath was the runner-up. Linda gave up writing poetry to raise her family, beginning to pen verse again in the 1970s. She’s received scores of awards and was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995.
Happy Mothers’ Day to her, to all poets, to all readers of poetry, to everyone…
20 Responses
Great memory you have—will share these thoughts with her.
Great tribute to a most wonderful woman, a Mother to many in the community and within the MacLeod family.
Your mother always had a way with animals and an enjoyment of Mother Nature in its many forms and shapes, Wild birds I think just a part of the mosaic, possibly their songs a secret form of communication, much like her reading of “The Wind in the Willows”, priceless.
Awesome picture.
❤️ Beautiful Gloria!
TY my flower girl.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY, great snap, so miss my mom this time of year. Treasure each and every moment, as I know you do..hugs Heather
Like the gladiolus she carried on her wedding day, tall and elegant and striking she was.
Not sure about that..
Lichen cheese cake maybe??
Actually, my Mother; almost never, baked lichen.
She did, however frequently bake German Kuchen..
Lichen is part of the New Nordic cuisine!
Lovely verse Gloria.
I always thing of my mothers baking; especially on Mother’s Day..
Donuts, butter tarts, lichen…
Thanks GS1, world’s best mother-in-law.
A TOUCHING MOMENT INTO THE LIVES OF TWO BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. LI FE AND MEMORIES OF THE WORLD WE SHARE ARE SO PRECIOUS AT THIS TIME
What a lovely tribute to your mother.
TY 34.
Beautiful. It is a lovely picture of the two of you. Maxine looks so happy to be with you. Happy Mother’s Day!
What are the odds we both have mothers named Maxine?
A beautiful Mother Daughter portrait you will forever treasure.
In that moment your Mom has the world. She is outside in the sun,on an outing with her daughter. She is happy.
Lovely!
I often think of your mother, who looked so like Georgia O’Keefe.
Happy Mother’s Day! Your mom looks so happy enjoying the warmth of the sun. We treasure these moments.
Especially when there are fewer of them.