Aren’t I everything she could be?

Three poems about my mom

I.

The sun I watched set

Dropped away from 

My mom’s view three hours ago. 

Had she gone to the beach to watch,

The sight would match. 

Our sun dropped into the ocean:

Hers the gulf coast, mine pacific.

I wish she could again

Pull rocks from my mouth 

On a beach. Watch the baby 

Eat sand and smile.

Watch the baby 

Reaching out to share.

Twenty years ago in Florida

I would cry in my overwhelm:

Mom would remove the sticking fabric

placing me softly

On a clean towel

Bare with a chair overturned

To cover me from above.

Mom gave me safety

From the sand and the wet swimsuit and the burning sun

Sheltered and cool

The baby I was 

Found urgent sleep.

Back in the present

A mother waves to me by

Holding up her smiling baby’s hand.

Reaching out to share

My nose will be burnt

In the morning.

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II.

Is this my mother’s domain?

She told me once that I am 

What she wanted to be at my age

Can we share?

Have I pushed her out of something again?

Pretty doors in Santa Fe and

The shape of my eyebrows

Skiing without Dad and

My taste in clothes

I was so hurt when she didn’t visit

Those first two years

Aren’t I everything she could be?

I feel responsible for everything

Since my birth.

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III.

Growing up is

none of my business

Sometimes I need my mother

We both forget we can

have short conversations

Last night she stroked my hair

We gossiped and wished

for more proximity,

for better conversationalists,

for intelligent and

indulgent love

We pack up parts of my room

She said: This is healing

but I am just surviving

She compliments

my eyebrows like

I knew she would 

We are lost without one another

We would not exist even if 

we are sometimes messy

She is the reason I’m 

alive: from the 

beginning to the end.