210509 Sunsets at Little Pike - for my Mom.

 May 9

This is my mother with my first daughter, Tamar. She died when Tamar was seven, before Rain was born. I wrote this poem several years later as I began to see who my mother was, not as a mother but as a woman unto herself. 

sunsets at little pike

partly she was alone

in the small green cabin

with the wood stove

partition walls

old linoleum red-yellow on the floor

she was alone,

even though we were all there.

after dinner after the dishes

before (not much before) we lit the lamps

and dad primed the coleman

she'd say, " i'd better go 

before i lose the sun"

i expect she asked us if we'd like to come

i know we often went

along the bay shore to the point

out onto the coast of the huron lake

like cast pebbles.

we made our way in a joy of sure-foot motion

across the round-hole limestone

moonscape

fissured acres of grey

like lava, like the moon.

then she'd see what she what she had come for

gold pink and purple sky

and mirrored in the lake

we'd stop to watch,  she to photograph

another sunset

because it was now    

and wouldn't ever be again  

and i

standing near her felt her spell

but partly her magic was beyond me

i couldn't reach her then.

turning from the sun (gone down)

the ritual complete

we laughed with her

stumbled back home in the dark.

 

the water lapped like drinking beasts

the velvet cedars were silent 

the stars came out.

*****

written in 1997

A blessing for mothers, on Mother's Day. Be well.

Mumma Yaga