Fumbling Toward Grace
Tomorrow is my mother’s 55th birthday. At least it would be, if she hadn’t died just a month before her 33rd birthday. I don’t want that to get lost, or to just be a quick take. So today I’m posting a poem for my mother. She gave me her eyes, her quick temper, and her loving heart. She gave me life.
Your truly as a peanut, and mi madre.
When I am Asked
Lisel Mueller
When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.
It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.
I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.
I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.
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