My Mothers Wait For Their Belated Mother’s Day Poem

Charlotte to Charlotte says,
“Watch. This week she will buy seed bread
and do five loads of laundry instead.”

Laura Matilda and Irene Genevieve know:
“But after straightening two sofa pillows,
her words will grow like dust on the piano.”

Margaret Madeline whispers to Wanda Margaret,
“But first she will nibble dark chocolate
hidden in the kitchen towel drawer, I bet.”

Folded, uncluttered, sweet, alone, the poem comes.
The mothers hum two hundred years of grief-love
one month before my daughter, with her name, leaves home.

2013