Fast Day 259 May 13 2012 {Mothers' Day 2012}

 Nobori Battle Flags

Mothers' Day 2012


from beyond the moon, or the Milky Way,
the robins come each spring in robin time -
which lasts until the goldfinch nesting comes -
Susan scrubs winter from the balcony,
and plants the first pansies, as colorful
as Japanese nobori battle flags!

this drama recurs with movement calm as sleep:
the magic of the robin’s nest, as we
give up that porch of sweet spring and winter
divide, giving them the place for four weeks
while balcony flower boxes are stacked
everywhere that sun is available!

we await young robins, we unemployed
warriors recruited by Shimada
of the Seven Samurai, battling
the nest-thieving doves’ mindless banditry:
driving them off with well-placed blows and shouts,
which are the fruits of their insolence and crimes!
when we end our vigil in June,  we smile -
having drunk a tonic of the wilderness !

The nest in 2012

--
notes

I am putting this up early, since it is Mothers' Day today. I had this poem and the one about the engaged couple, which was a papal commission... well, not a papal commission, but a commission, so I had a superfluity of the lyrical this week.
This is for week 5/13 through 5/19, so number 260 will be in week 5/21 through 5/27, which would mark 6 years.

This poem compares pansies to the Japanese battle flags called nobori, and presupposes a little familiarity with the film masterpiece The Seven Samurai.  The Magnificent Seven just will not suffice.
In the Seven Samurai, the samurai warrior Shimada Kanbei gets together a band of seven unemployed samurai to defend a peasant village against bandits.
Doves are paralleled to bandits, because doves are dirty and cannot even build nests.

Fast Day 206 May 14 2011 {Invisible Palaces}

Invisible Palaces
Mothers' Day 2011

The old porch where she combed my daughter’s
golden hair, where we sat on second hand
rattan from my mother’s great-grand-porch
where I mosquito slapped and watched TV
on poplar summer evenings so peppered
with life that they could never, never be!

Combing golden hair, she transforms
the kiln-fired brick, dusty mortar, and the tile
into a glazed mosaic of elegant scheme;
she paints Sheherazad’s aviaries
matted within a garden of vermilion
parrots and bright and hand-dyed toucans!

We sit in our bergamot-scented Alhambra,
serene as the Caliph’s diligent Wazeers,
in the Middle Ages of parenthood -
an endless arcade where metal windows
turn to rich Arab wood, and esparto
shades undulate to distant seashore wind.

--
notes
Posted early because I can't wait any longer. Maybe I'll start doing two poems a week. Look out!

Alhambra - the palace in Spain
Wazeer - the main minister of an Islamic ruler

This tries to express how love and parenthood transform humble surroundings into magnificence.
--

Fast Day 101 May 9 2009 {Mothers' Day 2009}

Mothers' Day 2009


Mothers teach us how to pray before we
go to bed, kneeling beside white sheets
and using the currency of our innocence
to try to set the world upright again,
and save us all from atom bombs
and things that go bump
in the night.

Mothers teach us how to dress before we
go outside - we who want to naked run
and throw our clothes in a thoughtless pile -
she buttons up the surrounding collars;
and orders the chattering teeth
of shameless zippers
to subdue!

Mothers bake yet are not bakers; mothers
heal yet are not doctors; they open eyes
to art, many never having held a brush;
design pillow forts, yet aren't architects.
the grace of God they
dispense, yet are
not priests.

Mothers are an ancient holy order,
taken vows of silence, crying why? but
never speaking, door keepers of God's grace
that beats upon our shut monastery door:
she bids enter! the divine
visitor to wash
and eat!

Mothers sit shiva upon their dreams and
never let us know the shipwreck of desires
they had for the princes and princesses
of their fruitful bodies, for mothers yet
may resurrect the hopes and dreams
of mankind grown old:
young harts leaping!



notes:
young harts leaping:
from the Song of Solomon.