
It’s not much of a poem blitz when you only feature two poems (three if you count my giveaways) but this year I’m feeling a little disengaged from Mother’s Day, my mother being gone two years now. Even so, two poems are enough when they’re as good as these.
I left Lucille Clifton’s “oh antic God” at the drugstore in the adult diaper aisle. No one wants to linger in the adult diaper aisle, a sad and embarrassing place, but maybe whoever comes across Clifton’s poem won’t mind pausing to take in her short tribute, her raw longing.

oh antic God
by Lucille Clifton
oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.
I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.
I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.
The poem is a glimpse of a woman long gone. Only aging children can fully appreciate that every mother—dead or just old, incontinent, thin-haired, stooped, sour-smelling—was once young and ripe with life. That mother from childhood is unreachable, so that what was once annoying or inconvenient, like being called into dinner in the middle of outdoor play, becomes what is most longed for.
return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.
(The book I photocopied the poem from didn’t title this poem, so I assumed it was a continuation of the poem from the previous page, which it wasn’t. A long way of saying I mis-titled the copy I left. Pay no attention.)
I set Wendell Berry’s “To My Mother” on top of candy boxes at a fancy grocery store. This poem is so beautiful I felt I was leaving treasure. I hope some woman’s son long grown out of his rebellious stage finds the poem and cherishes his mother all the more.

To My Mother
by Wendell Berry
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.
So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,
prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,
and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it
already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
Berry’s poem awoke a memory that I keep at bay because it always makes me feel ashamed. And in a small wonder, the poem not only woke the memory but changed it for me.
Years ago my mother’s beloved brother, my Uncle Jack, who had visited me in Michigan from Texas in his old age and who I also loved, passed away. And I didn’t call her to say, how sad about Uncle Jack, how are you doing, how was the funeral. Maybe at first I was busy with little children. That’s an explanation, not an excuse because there was no good excuse for not calling her right away. Weeks went by and I still didn’t call her. It got to be a thing. I was so ashamed of not calling that I kept not calling. My mother never liked talking on the phone but still. I didn’t call. A month or two later my mother called me. I still remember weeding a bed of goatsbeard when the phone rang. “Maggie!” she said, as if she were surprised I were alive. I fell over myself apologizing, crying as I told her how sorry I was. Even now it makes me feel terrible to think of it, to consider how I’d feel if my one of my own daughters neglected to call me after a big loss like that.
But Berry’s poem switches the focus of that moment. Because my mother, like Berry’s mother, instantly forgave me. It wasn’t even a question. She just wondered, she said, that was all. She didn’t seem mad or hurt, just glad to be finally talking to me.
Ah. How lucky I am to have had a mother like that
Looking past my own experience to a country beset by hardening resentments and bitter reproach, I am all the more struck by the vision of heaven Berry paints, a place
where those who love
each other have forgiven each other
This forgiveness, freely given before the offense has even happened, is what allows heaven to be so heavenly. In such a place, Berry writes,
. . . the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
Julia Kasdorf’s “What I Learned From My Mother” is a poem I’ve featured before. I had a dozen copies of it, so I left all of them at the train station when I picked up my daughter for the Mother’s Day weekend.
poem on bench
Happy Mother’s Day to all, especially to those who no longer have their mothers. And also to those who never knew their mothers and to those who had a mother not up to the job. We were all born of woman, and there is goodness in that.
My goodness, you are such a beautiful spirit. Thanks for these lovelies. I’m going to share the Berry with my mom. We’re nowhere near as gracious to each other; forgiveness has come like a slowly leaking, reluctant faucet when it comes at all. But still, on and on and on, we love each other.
I’m sorry you lost your mom’s physical self.
– Zarana
Thanks, Zarana. I love that image of the faucet and the way the two of you keep on keepin on.
Hi PoemElf…I just posted a comment here to you but don’t see it….hmmmm…I don’t want to redo it in case it is just delayed for some reason…but I’ll check back later to see and if not redo it…..
PoemElf, oh, phooey! I don’t see my earlier post about your Mother’s Day poems..it is prolly flowing out there in the ozone somewhere…
If it shows up here then you will get two fairly identical comments from me…
I loved your three choices and as I’ve lost my mom, too, I understand your pain at this time. How can you NOT miss someone who was not only there every minute of your “here and now” life, she also knew YOU nine months longer. How can such a person NOT be missed in the “here and now” life?
Tonight I was doing laundry downstairs in our laundry room and chatting with a fellow launderer. I asked how her Mom’s Day went and she said it was hard because she misses her mom and thinks of the things she did as a young gal that hurt and upset her. And how she can’t take those back now–or ever.
I remembered your Wendell Berry poem–so beautiful!–and said to her,
“Liz, she forgave you those things before you even did them.”
She looked at me and said “Thank you for that. Thank you for that.”
There was joy and sincerity in her eyes.
So you gave a lovely poem to us, and now someone you don’t know at all has a lifted spirit.
Thank you for that, you excellent mother you.
I love that poem being passed around over laundry! Like a healing touch, a prayer, an envelope of needed cash
Indeed! Amen to that…
A Sabbath Poem (Bialosky)
ANOTHER LOSS TO STOP FOR
~ by Jill Bialosky
Against such cold and mercurial mornings,
watch the wind whirl one leaf
across the landscape,
then, in a breath, let it go.
The color in the opaque sky
seems almost not to exist.
Put on a wool sweater.
Wander in the leaves,
underneath healthy elms.
Hold your child in your arms.
After the dishes are washed,
a kiss still warm at your neck,
put down your pen. Turn out the light.
I know how difficult it is,
always balancing and weighing,
it takes years and many transformations;
and always another loss to stop for,
to send you backwards.
Why do you worry so,
when none of us is spared?
Marc, thanks for sharing this amazing poem……truth and beauty….I’ve read it a dozen times….and that last line is just—wow, what a line.