A Fourth Parentish Poem (Mother's Day Edition)

Hi, Mom!

            For Denise, on Mother’s Day

Someday you will be on the receiving end

of the athlete’s face-flash, thumbs-up wave

to the force responsible for all he is today.

Now you are the hands that wipe face and tear

chicken into tiny strips on plastic plates

you wash and stack three times each day.

Five years hence you will buy spiral-bounds

and comic book lunch boxes soon lost

or left for dead on schoolyard steps.

Sometime next year you will exhale,

even when you’re not alone or free

to finish a report or nap on a cloud.

At a certain age, you will wonder again

if you really are a mom when the proof

lives elsewhere with another pretty blond.

This is the game you’ve joined late,

looking for yourself laughing in the stands,

seeing you’ve always been on the field yourself.