5 Poems To Read Today: The (Belated) Mother's Day Edition

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

via Pusheen.com.

Admittedly, this post is a day late. BUT, Moms are pretty important, so...JUSTIFIED. From the good to the bad to the melancholy, enjoy these damn good poems today:

1. [Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome]

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.

Christina Rossetti

2. Song

 You are as gold 

as the half-ripe grain 

that merges to gold again, 

as white as the white rain 

that beats through 

the half-opened flowers 

of the great flower tufts 

thick on the black limbs 

of an Illyrian apple bough.

  Can honey distill such fragrance 

As your bright hairó

For your face is as fair as rain, 

  yet as rain that lies clear 

  on white honey-comb,

lends radiance to the white wax, 

so your hair on your brow 

casts light for a shadow.

H.D.

3. Not Here

Searching for pillowcases trimmed   

with lace that my mother-in-law

once made, I open the chest of drawers   

upstairs to find that mice

have chewed the blue and white linen   

dishtowels to make their nest,

and bedded themselves

among embroidered dresser scarves   

and fingertip towels.

Tufts of fibers, droppings like black   

caraway seeds, and the stains of birth   

and afterbirth give off the strong   

unforgettable attar of mouse

that permeates an old farmhouse   

on humid summer days.

A couple of hickory nuts

roll around as I lift out

the linens, while a hail of black

sunflower shells

falls on the pillowcases,

yellow with age, but intact.

I’ll bleach them and hang them in the sun   

to dry. There’s almost no one left

who knows how to crochet lace....   

The bright-eyed squatters are not here.   

They’ve scuttled out to the fields   

for summer, as they scuttled in

for winter—along the wall, from chair   

to skirted chair, making themselves   

flat and scarce while the cat

dozed with her paws in the air,

and we read the mail

or evening paper, unaware.

Jane Kenyon

4. My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer

1

When the moon appears

and a few wind-stricken barns stand out

in the low-domed hills

and shine with a light

that is veiled and dust-filled

and that floats upon the fields,

my mother, with her hair in a bun,

her face in shadow, and the smoke

from her cigarette coiling close

to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,

stands near the house

and watches the seepage of late light

down through the sedges,

the last gray islands of cloud

taken from view, and the wind

ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat

on the black bay.

2

Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send

small carpets of lampglow

into the haze and the bay

will begin its loud heaving

and the pines, frayed finials

climbing the hill, will seem to graze

the dim cinders of heaven.

And my mother will stare into the starlanes,

the endless tunnels of nothing,

and as she gazes,

under the hour’s spell,

she will think how we yield each night

to the soundless storms of decay

that tear at the folding flesh,

and she will not know

why she is here

or what she is prisoner of

if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.

3

My mother will go indoors

and the fields, the bare stones

will drift in peace, small creatures --

the mouse and the swift -- will sleep

at opposite ends of the house.

Only the cricket will be up,

repeating its one shrill note

to the rotten boards of the porch,

to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,

to the sea that keeps to itself.

Why should my mother awake?

The earth is not yet a garden

about to be turned. The stars

are not yet bells that ring

at night for the lost.

It is much too late.

Mark Strand

5. The Intruder

My mother—preferring the strange to the tame:

Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,

Frog’s belly distended with finny young,

Leaf-mold wilderness, harebell, toadstool,

Odd, small snakes roving through the leaves,

Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all

Wild and natural!—flashed out her instinctive love, and quick, she   

Picked up the fluttering, bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,   

And held the little horror to the mirror, where

He gazed on himself, and shrieked like an old screen door far off.

Depended from her pinched thumb, each wing

Came clattering down like a small black shutter.

Still tranquil, she began, “It’s rather sweet ...”

The soft mouse body, the hard feral glint

In the caught eyes. Then we saw,

And recoiled: lice, pallid, yellow,

Nested within the wing-pits, cozily sucked and snoozed.   

The thing dropped from her hands, and with its thud,

Swiftly, the cat, with a clean careful mouth

Closed on the soiled webs, growling, took them out to the back stoop.

But still, dark blood, a sticky puddle on the floor   

Remained, of all my mother’s tender, wounding passion   

For a whole wild, lost, betrayed, and secret life   

Among its dens and burrows, its clean stones,   

Whose denizens can turn upon the world   

With spitting tongue, an odor, talon, claw,   

To sting or soil benevolence, alien

As our clumsy traps, our random scatter of shot.   

She swept to the kitchen. Turning on the tap,   

She washed and washed the pity from her hands.

Carolyn Kizer

I hope you had a brilliant Mother's Day, and that you enjoyed our mini-collection of poetry today. Stay tuned for more mini-collections and general musings. If you'd like 20 more poems to read this week, you can check out our other "5 Poems To Read Today" right here, here, here, and here. Enjoy!

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