Showing posts with label Motherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motherhood. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Coyote

 

Today I write poems.

The hard ones.

The worst and best to write.

 

Regret at how I hurt you

as you were so little

while my fears were so big

and so looming.

 

I am sorry.

I am fool enough to think

these words may be enough.

 

Looking out the window

at the fog that got us both,

I know this is how you, feel, too—

lost, unseeing.

 

I don’t know when you will understand

and shake off your winter coat

and run, orange fur escaping into the sun

and meadows I kept you from.

Go now, I pray.

 

Your bruisings I will hold in my heart, I hope,

if allowed,

so you may be free

 

from this tumbleweed field

where I birthed you,

where my eyelashes are becoming weighted down

by dust.

 

Go, go, and remember the best of us.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

Thursday, May 9, 2024

She, Who First Brushed My Hair

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

She, caretaker of the delicate,

loves lavender, and roses,

and has the most

extravagant in town.

 

Loves memories of

Neligh and being

the only one Grandma

would let try on her fine jewelry.

 

Loved paper dolls and babies,

wanted one with brown eyes,

and because God was listening,

got two—

 

me, her first, for

she, who first brushed my hair—

her baby born early,

born with none,

 

a lost heartbeat, found—

kissed my hands, day one,

kissed them, two—

 

she, caretaker of the delicate, her doves,

she, who first brushed my hair.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

A Mother’s Day poem for my mama. 

Happy (early) Mother’s Day!

I was born early via emergency C-section due to being breech with a prolapsed umbilical cord and no discernible heartbeat to a very frightened first-time mama.  Also, I didn’t get hair for a while so my mom taped a little bow on my head until I did.  Haha.

She has the most amazing roses in her yard—passersby often stop and take photos.

Photo:  a note she stuck in the poem, “Étude Réaliste,” by Algernon Charles Swinburne inside a volume of poetry, Anthology of the World’s Best Poems, Memorial Edition, Volume V, 1950, which she gave me on my 50th birthday. 

And, because Mama loves roses and Elvis:

 



Shay’s Word List

dVerse OLN