My Milk Glass Mother

You were my thunderstorm mother.

You were my abalone mother.

You were my milk glass mother.

You reveled in flaws. You turned an opaque hobnail to the sun,

You cracked open to reveal cloud after shimmering cloud.

I was your pewter daughter.

I was a crocheted blanket.

I was a camouflaged nest.

I gained as I protected, worked, concealed.

I never showed my need, my dropped stitch.

I would have held you in my arms, not precious but sturdy, lasting, forever.

We were both broken by the brutal,                          

oyster-hard storm. The thunder-head           

battered and blasted without end.

I asked you to swim.

You learned to swim by drowning and then relearning breath. 

I should have known.

Roots of trees reveal the mirrored light of transcendence.

1944 Bible

A book of images, not answers.

Not births, not deaths. No family tree.

Writing on the wall, but not on the pages.

A gentle rectangle around “whom God hath joined” is the only notation.

Photos and papers burst the spine.

Ex-boyfriends, poems from the daughter,

Father’s World War I service record. Asterisk: Silver Star.

My mother opens it and remembers.

She closes it and all fades like a silvered mirror.

As if the foot is dry before and after you dip in the river.

Maggie Rosen (she/her), writes about the intersection between truth and myth, history and family legacy. She has won numerous awards and recognition for her work, including the Moving Words Competition, the Enoch Pratt/Little Patuxent Review Poetry Contest, and the Bethesda Urban Partnership Prize. Her poetry and hybrid work has been nominated twice for Best of the Net.  A poetry chapbook, The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts, was published in 2016 by Red Bird Chapbooks. Her poems and hybrid works have been published in Marrow, Heron Tree, Harpy Hybrid, Waccamaw, Cider Press Review, and Barely South, among others. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. See more at maggierosen.com. 

Image: © Friedrich Haag / Wikimedia Commons