Blogging
has been slow lately. I’ve been busy
with work the past few weeks, and it won’t get better until the middle of next
week. But I do wish to honor Mother’s
Day. Here is a lovely poem by Mark Strand, who I had a memorial post a few months ago on his passing.
My Mother on an Evening in
Late Summer
by Mark Strand
1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken
barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and
dust-filled
and that floats upon the
fields,
my mother, with her hair
in a bun,
her face in shadow, and
the smoke
from their cigarette
coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen
of her dress,
stands hear the house
and watches the seepage
of late light
down through the sedges
the last gray islands of
cloud
taken from view, and the
wind
ruffling the moon's
ash-colored coat
on the black bay.
2
Soon the house, with its
shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud
heaving
and the pines, frayed
finials
climbing the hill, will
seem to graze
the dim cinders of
heaven.
And my mother will stare
into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of
nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we
yield each night
to the soundless storms
of decay
that tear at the folding
flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner
of
if not the conditions of
love that brought her to this.
3
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare
stones
will drift in peace,
small creatures --
the mouse and the swift
-- will sleep
at opposite ends of the
house.
Only the cricket will be
up,
repeating its one shrill
note
to the rotten boards of
the porch,
to the rusted screens, to
the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to
itself.
Why should my mother
awake?
The earth is not yet a
garden
about to be turned. The
stars
are not yet bells that
ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.
No deep analysis is needed. The poem captures
the mother alone beneath the cosmos (first stanza) where she momentarily
wonders what life means (second stanza), and then goes back indoors where a
complete sense of order is established.
The implication is that she is the reason for the order, an order formed
by “the conditions of love” that has her bound.
Lovely and so true. Yes, mothers sacrifice
so much for us. Happy Mother’s Day.
