Unstrung

Unstrung

My flight as a projectile began in 1944.
My mother was 17 years old,
pregnant first at 15,
veteran of a back room abortion,
a real horror story in 1942;
pregnant again at 16 with me;
7 months pregnant when she saw Snoqualamie Pass
for the first time, from the front seat of a Model A,
watching my grandfather fix the fifth flat
since leaving Spokane the day before;
her mother already in Seattle, gone on ahead
to work at Boeings, doing her part for the war effort,
having spent Mother's Day alone.

As a child, as an adolescent, Mother's Day
didn't mean a hell of a lot to me,
just another Hallmark moment, another day
where presents could be purchased,
and cards, and ribbons, and roses.

But in 1966, when my mother was barely 39 years old,
she died of uterine cancer,
looking like an Auschwitz resident,
with a ten pound tumor swelling her uterus,
looking pregnant again, bravely awaiting
to give birth to death.

That was 43 years ago,
and every Mother's Day since
has grown more bittersweet.
Mother, if I was the arrow that you projected
out into this world
with the all the strength and verve you could muster,
then you became the stringless bow
of my dreams and misty memories;
a lovely face from a few photographs,
always with that flower in your hair.

Tomorrow your day arrives again,
and that knot of pain in my chest
will come, swell, and ebb,
as it has always done,
as it shall continue to do, until
our reconciliation.

I have let these days come and go
in silence, with a sad smile,
but not this one. No,
I celebrate the 22 Mother's Days
we shared in my ignorance and arrogance,
and Mother who can hear me--
I love you.
Thanks for being my bow.

Glenn Buttkus May 2009

This poem was composed in a rush of emotion, as I read Janet Leigh's lovely words. It is rough and real and some day may need some blue penciling, but I thrust it out there today because the message needed to be shared.