My Mother
 
My mother always bought grape jelly
and on special mornings
made scrambled eggs with pig brains,
which is better than it sounds.
She read to my sister and me every night
and that’s what got me through college,
because what she read was Shakespeare.
When I was maybe nine years old,
I broke a plate from her set of good China,
something irreplaceable,
and confessed in tears.
She kissed me and held me
and told me not to worry,
said the plate was just a thing
and it didn’t matter at all.
Sometimes she made vegetable soup
and I have never tasted anything better,
and I loved her salmon croquettes,
though she left in the vertebrae,
which was gross,
but gave us a little extra calcium.
She and my dad got in awful fights
now and again,
with their own tears and screaming
and great slamming of cabinet doors
but they stayed together until the end.
She had a heart attack
when she was almost fifty, a bad one,
but survived, and now, at 91,
remembers none of this.
My mother grew up poor,
poorer than anyone you ever knew,
but gave me riches.
I always buy strawberry preserves,
and they are delightful,
but maybe will try grape jelly
next time I go to the store.
There is so much that I have lost
with the years.
It’s been so long since I was home.




Not Zen
 
Maybe you see me
and wonder how I am serene.
This is the silence
of one absorbed into walls.
I wander between the hours
and feel nothing.
I look out the kitchen window.
I feed my dog a treat.
The world is full of music
but it is very poor music.
(Not bad, just poor.)
Maybe you see flowers
and believe they are beautiful.
Maybe you think of the bee.
I think of nothing.
This is absorbed into walls.
This is serene.
Maybe you see me
and decide I am old.
Maybe you see the cracks in my history.
Maybe you see me crashing into walls.
Poor music is everywhere,
but only old people
remember the disappointment
of warped records.
You don’t see me at all.
This is what I mean.