Dearest Mother

A poem about my mother. Dedicated to her great-grandchildren.

My sister for International Women’s Day, shared on social media, this photo of my mother when she was young (plus a glowing tribute to her).

In the photo, my mother is probably 30 (1968) but looking much younger! 4 kids on and several miscarriages. It is on the Humber River, in Toronto, Jamestown - a housing project we lived in before moving to N. Ontario and “the farm”.

I’ve written a number of things about my mother. Currently working on a series of “vignettes” - disjointed scraps of time, pulled from my memory to display for all to see, especially me. My mother features in many of them, she was the glue that kept everything together in our family.

My fondest memory of my Mom is dancing around our small kitchen, us kids in socks, sliding on the cheap linoleum floor while my mother crooned songs from her youth, probably her cherished Ink Spots or the Platters. Brings tears to my eyes just writing about it.

So today, pulled between Then and Now, I wrote this poem as my own tribute to my mother. Hopefully you find some meaning in it.

For My Mother’s Great-Grandchildren

Dearest mother,
I write these lines
for your great-grandchildren,
so they might glimpse your loveliness,
not just from analepsic anecdotes
or photographs, cracked and faded,
passed around a Sunday table
for a glance and a laugh.

When brash in youth
full of the fire you gave their flesh,
they regard your frail frame with gentle pity,
your cheeks, lined deep by time,
soft and pale,
your hands mottled by time’s wage
those same hands
that tucked them in and wiped away their tears,
now gently trembling,
and stroking your grey hairs in place,

I want them, in that moment,
to see you as I once saw you —
radiant as the first light of the day
shimmering through the hummingbird’s wings.
As beautiful as a faithful dog at your feet or
a home that is your own.

Dear mother, tell them this:
that I, your son, a foolish poet,
who spent his whole life in awe of you,
asked but for one gift
from this world of money and greed:
to spend my days remembering your eyes,
how they could flash with mischief,
sparkling like stars on a frozen pond,
or soften human hate with a love
that no poem nor any photograph
could register or reproduce.

My mother and I. April 2025.