The Naming

Unable to grasp a day,
hold a cup and know its contents,
I weep for the carpet in my room, March,
the fallen dogwood,
my daughter's incessant singing
of broken boughs.
So now it has been named.
A man in worsted wool tells me,
writes it down somewhere
I will never see or be shown.
This Adam, steward of ox and opossum,
mania, monkeys, depression, dingo,
dysthymia, cyclothymia, and asses,
leaves me, some Eve, unable and desperate
to distinguish a daffodil from a narcissus.

Ann Russek - 2000

Mother's Day

Once again avoiding
the weekly ritual of Wednesday,
a daughter's obligation.
Living across the sea
from an ailing mother gives amnesty
from visits, having to see first hand
what the others tell me - she will never
mention the basketball sized growth
on her abdomen, her useless legs.
The cancer she denies outright.
From this distance I need only
see the gladiolus in her summer
garden, the rambling roses
thick with scent and blossom
she would never
prune.  With these firmly fixed
memories masquerading as
present, the telephone does not
seem so forbidding. I make the call
each week, thinking of her swift
fingers as she knits, her lovely rows
of stitches not unlike her garden,
praying that this time I'll be greeted
by a keening ring tone,
the death knell of no answer

Ann Russek - 2007