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Introduction to the poem: I watched on TV tonight Undercover Boss, which can be quite touching. The chancellor of U. of Calif. Riverside, was working undercover, & he interacted as a guy named "Pete" with some of the students. Some talk re: losing parent to tragedy, etc. The chancellor later broke down, saying "I miss my parents." My own mother named Connie, died in 1970, at the age of 57, of cancer. This poem was written later, in about 1994:
Blue kitchen table covered with newspaper
Skinning and canning
Red and yellow tomatoes.
Acid juices running off my elbows.
Red mounds and bushels
Of my garden lushness.
My mother dead these twenty years
Comes to me,
Enters my presence with a
Deep abiding love.
A tender sureness surrounds me
As her spirit hovers.
This is like unto
A living prayer
We share.
She enters my body
Communing...
I think her thoughts
Of living only for her kids.
The tomato juice continues
To drip and run.
Squeezing the pieces
Into clean quart jars.
Slipping a wooden spoon
Down the sides to release air.
Constance
is
with
me.
The old graniteware canner
Is full and on the stove.
I hear the sounds
Of children coming.
My apron is sodden with
Redness and sour smell.
My mom then slips away.
Saying don't bother,
Raising those kids is
More important.
Don't bother.....
~~~~~~~~~~~
Joan
Blue kitchen table covered with newspaper
Skinning and canning
Red and yellow tomatoes.
Acid juices running off my elbows.
Red mounds and bushels
Of my garden lushness.
My mother dead these twenty years
Comes to me,
Enters my presence with a
Deep abiding love.
A tender sureness surrounds me
As her spirit hovers.
This is like unto
A living prayer
We share.
She enters my body
Communing...
I think her thoughts
Of living only for her kids.
The tomato juice continues
To drip and run.
Squeezing the pieces
Into clean quart jars.
Slipping a wooden spoon
Down the sides to release air.
Constance
is
with
me.
The old graniteware canner
Is full and on the stove.
I hear the sounds
Of children coming.
My apron is sodden with
Redness and sour smell.
My mom then slips away.
Saying don't bother,
Raising those kids is
More important.
Don't bother.....
~~~~~~~~~~~
Joan