Sunday night Mothers' Day Poetry

PEACHES
By S. K.

A shadowy room resurrects

the color of my mother's dress,

placing me in her history:

She’s hanging clothes

with wooden pins.

Rising in the oven

for a feast day’s breakfast,

St. Joseph's bread.

And then:

an inexplicable week of curls uncombed,

beds unmade, one tree planted

in a loss-filled spring.

She would have taught me

how to sew the stars in wool

and keep my hands just so

while winding yarn --

spools to lace crochet

a pillow's case.

Even without her lessons or worn bits of lore,

her sweater folded over a chair, everywhere

there is her history in aprons, the scent of lilacs

in her cut-glass vase, lessons in the saving remnants

of her saving grace --

peaches from the tree on Winthrop Street.

My mother, Concetta