To a Mother I Know
I have seen you lift
the whole car of your pain
and hold it above your head
with trembling arms.
Seen you bench-press
that two-ton rusted hulk aloft
for eighteen years
so that your daughter
could play in the open air
creating whole worlds, innocent
of the superhuman effort
you were making
to keep the weight
off her. It happens all the time,
mothers do this, they hoist
the unbearable and they bear it,
but witnessing you achieve
the impossible, breaks
something in me. Not
my heart, but the ice sheath
around it. I think
of my own mother, of course,
and how valiant her effort
at keeping me apart
from her suffering, though you can’t
really keep a daughter apart,
we are too much entwined
in one long umbilicus
reaching down
the generations like tree vines.
And this is what’s
the matter, mater, mother
of all truths: the weight
of what we try to carry
for each other will never
be fully known.
*
Alison Luterman has published four previous collections of poetry, most recently In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press,) and Desire Zoo (Tia Chucha Press.) Her poems have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Oakland, California. www.alisonluterman.net
Beautiful
Quietly magnificent poem–thank you.
Oh Alison, I kind of feel like you wrote that one just for me. I needed to hear that one right now. Thank you!
Wow. ❤️
Thanks so much for this poem, especially today, right now. (My mother-in-law of great strength and delicacy, Nana Nancy, died peacefully a week ago, and we’re preparing to sing at her memorial service.)
Thank you, Alison, for this gorgeous poem. My teacher Steven Jenkinson taught me that mother and matter have the same root, and I felt that intertwining of mattering and mothering in your images and words.
Great to hear you read this today, and to read it again. Thank you for your work.