2025, Mother's Day, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Mother’s Day Triptych 2025

Daughter

we must breathe, must we even
if it means creating the air
the way it's done in all the stories
all weeping and tyranny and laughter
your bright laughter, inflating the world

Mother

must we breathe? We must
each day the new creation, enduring
what will feel like endless miles
the way it's told in stories
alive, compelled to inflate the world


Wife

the secret: breathing, must touch
the air of all the new worlds
we are born in new each morning
like in those stories we write, smiling
at small beauties buried in the the world


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2024, Mother's Day, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Mother’s Day Triptych 2024

Daughter

there is life after all the dying
moments of light stretched
become newborn skies

new worlds birthed in tiny footprints
build the scaffolding
that hold up the sun



Wife

there is life! after all, the dying
is just compost for the onslaught of days
we grow new universes
hidden in reflowering chive

this mud, this plot of earth
a garden as old
as our mountains, our river


Mother

there is life after all. the dying
is a life burning bright

memory is fuel, the days stretch
a grain of white sand beside jade water

a sun, this mud, an Eden no one knows
they already know how to enter

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