My mother was an artist, of sorts, conjuring meals,
mortgage payments, Halloween costumes, Christmas
gifts from the offerings of a Catholic school salary
and odd cash from cleaning laundromats and doctors’
offices. In college, she wrote a paper on Kandinsky.
I found it, by chance, hidden among my keepsakes:
reports cards; a third-grade science report; yearly
school photos. I read it. I did not understand,
at the time, how my mom’s face twisted into
a portrait of ruefulness and disappointment.
As if our house were a void in her soul, she filled
it with pin-and-thread, burlap and yarn, an elongated
statue of a mother and her child. She took pride
in her work. What did I know of the bitterness
of hands that cannot make their art? I don’t
have the poetry to answer. Maybe these abstract
shapes, these lines, these curves, I trace on a page
can, with imagination, represent her loss, and her gain.
