A Mother (Poetry Pushcart Nominee)

After: To Dorothy by Marvin Bell

 

Alice was beautiful, exactly. A mother, inexactly.

We strays played unsupervised, traipsed near home

in fields, creek and woods near our tiny brick house.

Alice read books, took long wanders alone, solitary

bike rides on roadsides, past meadows and thickets.

I and eight siblings grew up in a village 

where everybody helped raise us.  

 

My next door neighbor, Sue Ann, told me,

“Alice taught me how to dream.”

Mother dreamed in wildflowers, carted home

bright blooming weeds, planted in the yard and garden.

Weeds were as much a part of carefree childhood

as classical music, singing rounds or parents reading,

constantly tucked into stacks of books.

 

One June day, a rose bush appeared in the yard,

lifted from a meadow, planted in the side lot.

This hardy white wood rose thrived in clay,

tolerated shade from a two-story garage next door,

and grew in standing water into a luxurious bush.

Little kids crawled under thorny branches,

a rose fort cave set against the tumble down fence,

sheltered in boughs of sweet-smelling saw-tooth leaves.

 

Alice luxuriated in the concourse of bees and butterflies,

feasted on the sight, the smell of rose nectar, enjoyed

the birds that sheltered and nested in its branches,

weeded wildflowers past dark in the company of roses,

clad in one of Dad’s un-ironed dress shirts,

oblivious to dinner or hungry kids.

 

A  nearby hedgerow of wild roses surrendered

a sucker from a living roadside fence

placed along a ditch to keep in livestock.

She planted the bush to shade the house's bricks

that got oven hot in summer.

A thicket swelled up to the living room window.

Roots clawed the cinder blocks of the cellar,

thorns barred the faucet, gave briary scratches

to anyone unwise enough to turn on the hose.

 

Alice wiled away years admiring bud clusters

producing brief blooms of white radiance,

five single petals on each flower, the roses so profuse 

the old-fashioned bush looked like a grand bouquet.

We and the neighbors roved freely amid 

the wildflowers and weeds, our beautiful mother 

with good intentions, wild as a wood rose.

The fierce protector proclaimed, “My rose is living.”

They were fodder for photos, sketches or oil paint.

We learned her mantra, “I sow, not reap.”

No rose hipping. No rose hip jam, syrup, tea.

No rosary beads. No rose schnapps bottled in Fall.

No one dared cut stems off Alice’s roses.

***

After: Max Ernst’s Sans Titre, 1921

https://dantebea.com/2016/05/14/max-ernst-41/

Outside the frame, youth’s presence. 

Disembodied hands, warrior and goddess.

A man handsome as the statue of David,

a woman lissom as Helen of Troy.

They orchestrate destruction, inflict pain,

a rising dead sun, a setting cold moon,

dual heavenly bodies in motion

placed in missionary position on paper.

Inside the frame, they play

a feral game of cat’s cradle.

Her dainty hands induce a lobotomy,

copper wire pierces an eye from retina to iris.

He elbows the bald eyeball on the horizon,

a broken hand dangles askew

from the strong male arm.

Artistic fingers flutter on his good hand.

With the precision of heavy boots,

he crushes a delicate butterfly

between two long fingers.

Barbarity writhes in the killing jar.

***

Ruby-Throated Witches And Wizards

My zooming companion lives only in the Western Hemisphere. My first ruby-throated hummingbird found me when I was a girl. I’ve been hers ever since. I ran to tell my mother, “A noisy fairy likes your wild iris. It disappeared with a poof.” My mother explained, “No, that was a hummingbird. They fly fast.” 

The bird is my totem for independence. I wait for my ruby-throated girl's her arrival in spring. I follow her zippy paths, fill her feeder in summer. When she leaves, I miss her. I mark the cold days on the calendar until she comes back. April-May, September-October: each year I wait and record the day of year for the first and last buzzer sighting. The earliest arrival: April 24-First Buzzer ’08. The latest date of departure: October 5- Last Buzzer’13. 

Hummingbird names stem from their color and shape: rufous, Anna’s, ruby-throated, broad tailed, black-chinned, calliope. This girl flies quicker than my eyes can track, her comings and goings to sip nectar look like magic. She flies in ways no other can: moves backward in air, passes through a grid in a chain link fence, hovers a foot away from my nose. She migrates without a flock, solo flights over the Gulf of Mexico up to 500 miles each day. The size of a bumblebee, a fearless scold, she dive bombs buzzers who invade her feeder or favorite red flowers. I’ve watched one bird battle five, all soaring tree height drops and arcs, skimming the ground on each upswing, finessing top gun maneuvers for twenty minutes. 

The Aztecs watched the warrior birds, convinced they were reincarnated soldiers who died in war. According to Mayan myth, this fierce bird has an otherworldly appearance because the creator used left over bits of other birds. A hummer has strange features: three sets of eyelids, no sense of smell, legs that can neither walk or hop, only perch, and iridescent throat feathers that flash red in the male. They sport a long beak sword, a longer forked tongue that uncurls inside tubular flowers and a strong heart that beats faster than any other animal on earth. Hollow boned, one bird weighs less than a nickel, has the least feathers of all other birds, and is fiercely independent. A female mates but refuses cohabitation. She lives a single-life, even for nest building, feeding and raising young. This smart woman knows her limits— her progeny number one or two. Tiny chicks hatch from eggs half the size of a jelly bean, born into a stretchy quarter-sized nest of spider silk and plant down that expands as they grow. 

Spanish explorers called them “flying jewels.” Mine knows me. She hovers outside the office window where I’m writing until she gets my attention. She wants the feeder filled— I obey.