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


Standard
2023, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Mother’s Day Triptych

1. Mother

in sorrow beauty swims
life whittles to bone depth
yet all wounds are cauterized
with the memory suspended in tears

2. Daughter

in the memory of tears, joy
the great wound, a river, erodes
what the world makes on us
what remains we pass on

3. Wife

these remains, whittled
shaped by endless cross-currents
are built upon: this altar
to the immortal in We
crystallized in joyful tears

Standard