My mother has been dead for some years now,
long enough that it affects my sense of today,
Mother’s Day 2020, don’t have to be on my best
behavior, buy flowers, send a card, all the things
a person has to do to commemorate the day. If
she were alive today she would be 112 years old,
deeply into the group of the most susceptible to
the virus we have, another person to worry about,
someone else I’d have to pretend for during visits.
It’s hard to image my mother skyping, or waving
from a nursing home window, or even dealing with
it, with me, over the phone, then she would probably
make that tsking noise she used so well to show
her disappointment, or one of her drawn out pauses
she used to get me to say more or correct the things
I had just said. If she were alive today and things
were well and the world was the way it should be
I’d write something on a card, she always liked that,
I’d write something all about the feelings a son has
for his mother, but something she’d recognize as me.
……………
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Vox Poetica, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, and in the anthology, Along the Way.