(with thanks to Maragaret Atwood)
This is a word we use to hang our lives on.
It’s the right shape for the small curves of
our pain, the lonesome lines of our
failures, for those
loaf-shaped warm feelings –
airy – both substantial and not.
Wrap it in plastic and buy it once a
year: here, Mom, thanks for
my life.
I think.
We use this word to shake out our freedom
and to rattle our chains
We use this word to hold our daughters
When what we have really become is a
weight within their lives.
There are whole years filled with fear of
this word – trying not to be
what came before
slowly seeing how
we are exactly that
Hoping that our daughters will be more
and seeing our own
fears in the gaze they
turn on us
Variations on the Word Mother
Judith Mikesch McKenzie has traveled much of the world, but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. She loves change – new places, new people, new challenges, but writing is her home. Her poems have been published in Wild Roof Journal, Halcyone Literary Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Elevation Review, Scribblerus, Cathexis Northwest Press, Meat for Tea Valley Review, and several others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.