Mother

Mother
You were there when I began
Both as a child and as a man
Holding out an outstretched hand as you
Walked the walk before me.

You taught me to have faith in Christ
And because of our relationship I comprehend
Another sliver of the piece of the Father’s mind–
How he holds the capacity to love his sons
Unconditionally
No matter what they think or say or do.

You laid out your tools more than a thousand times
Upon the dusty, dingy floor and poured out
Your sweat and your time and your toil
To show me what real love is by
Your actions.

That outstretched hand is layered with cracks
Like the maze of lines in the cracked porcelain
Tile of the tub you took out on that last job.
Your fingers, each finger, is bent, broken, burnt, or bruised
As that hand still reaches out for me
Sort of               lifelessly
            hanging
But still sticking out anyway.


You trudge upon that path you know
On your hands and knees so that your knees
Are worn down like the stumps of trees
And gnarled and knobby, full of bumps and uneven.
And I can see the rings of your time spent
Wrapped around you,
Never wasting a single oval,
Never wearing a wrinkle
You did not make the best of.

When I fell and cut myself or bruised my skin
You picked me up in those sacrificial hands
To wrap them around my waist and hug me.
You cleaned out the dirt and bandaged my
Wounds
And took them up, carrying them
As if they were your own.

When mother pulled upon my arm and almost ripped it off my shoulder
When mother got me so sick that the doctors laid my limp body
Upon a cold, metal table and
Shot up my little legs with penicillin as I screamed in pain
When mother mocked me and let others ridicule me until I cried
When mother drove me around town half-smockered at 1 am
When I looked for her and could not find her
When I looked for her for at least two days and
Found her in the bed of another man and woman
When mother did not tuck me in, and I looked out thru the window at all the stars
Wondering
If you could see them from your porch
When she took the phone and locked it in her room so I couldn’t call you
When she smiled snarkishly expecting to be worshipped on Mother’s Day for
Giving birth to me then shoving me forward into a hellish existence
When mother ripped my entire world out from under me as if
The entire life I knew were all one big joke she played on me…
You were there
Going through it all with me, your big hand clasped around my little, my growing fingers.
You lifted me up and showed me a better way to live,
When my mother abandoned me and gave up her “right” to watching me grow,
You earnestly and vigorously put on her pristine shoes squeezing
Your toes into the ends of the heels, wearing them on top of your
Ratty, mud-stained sneakers, making them fit as best you could
Then going off to labor yet another day.