Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Sunday, May 14, 2017

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

3 comments:

anymouse said...

Lovely words and your mother was clearly a lovely lady, Shaw. I was quite young when mine passed so i never really got to know my mom as an adult. As small children, of course, we idolize our parents, but we don't truly KNOW them until we know the as adults.
I'm sure your mom would be very proud of you and your best friend. Peace

Shaw Kenawe said...


Thank you, BlueBull. My mother was lost to me when I was a toddler.

anymouse said...

Ahh, well then we both went through most of our lives without our mothers. So, we both grew up faster than others and perhaps that's the only positive aspect of that, in hindsight, anyway. Peace.