My Mother's Day Poem

Still Life for Mother's Day

Who's making pancakes, I wake

to their call, not really, I've been long

awake. There's no wrapping

paper, get out of my way. You’ve
gone out to buy the steak, then bring

back lavender, pink, white sweet

peas, so many they don't fit

in the vase. I asked for something

smaller, quiet, something like a song
for my heart, but today's treat
is they -- one by one -- leave me.
Lozenges for my wounded lips,
oil for the bitten teat. Sunday
regular with laundry on the line
and my babies fighting
in the kitchen over their place
in the deep hole they have dug through
me with you. It should be they,
but on Mother’s Day, you
flip the hot cakes in the pan,
slip your hand into my shirt,
ask me still love. I do.

The photos are from my son's birthday, but you get the picture.