WOW, A CONTRACT FOR MY WRITING

I just signed a contract for the following two poems to be published in:

CRADLE SONGS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS ABOUT MOTHERHOOD

STILL
My dead son’s birthday
arrives this sunny fresh morning
with birdsong, dogs playing,
sunflowers and ripe rowanberries:
Thirty-eight years without
his curious blue eyes
his gentle living presence.

He is so gone, I cannot recall
his voice, skin, or smell,
his having come through my womb,
suckled my young breasts,
walked hand in hand,
cannot recall his giggle at my touch,
his breath, asleep in my arms.
I gaze at frozen photos,
his living face long dissolved
into some eternal amnesia.

But in my life’s stream,
the mighty river he is
courses on with the
flotsam
and jetsam
of forgiveness
and grief drifting by
on days like this.

He flows in me, still.

AND


SEARCHING
It is spring again.
The river swells,
Flooding firmly rooted islands,
Sweeping out to sea.

Restless, she searches,
peering into my cupboards
Moving the condiments in the fridge:
Mom I’m looking for something.
What are you looking for?
I don’t know, but I need something before I leave.
The canned goods tumble
Across the dark shelf.

Looming over me she flings her arms
Around my now-smaller body.
Overwhelmed, I feel such
Strength in her swift currents:
Me anchored in rocks and habits
She springing, dancing, lunging…
We embrace in the kitchen where lilacs
Spread their scent.

What do you look for, daughter:
Answers to unasked questions,
Revisions to old queries?
Selves ripened, canned answers,
A tidy jar of morals, a bag of tricks
To pack before you leave?

The debris of my lifetime
My fertile topsoil, all my vegetation
Roils in your blood
Tumbles from your surface to your depths
To spill into the great sea
Of your own life’s experience.
Rooting it will grow,
Nurtured, it will fruit.

Returning will you grace my kitchen
With a fresh found truth?
I will hide some special morsels
To share with you next spring
When the river swells again.