After Reading Thomas Freidman's Mother's Day Column

THE DAY AFTER MOTHER'S DAY
a belated card for Pat

1
My mom and dad died before the millennium
before Y2K failed to stop time
or give us a bonus bump backward.

As long as you stand on the road
deciding which way to go
you live in time with only love or death

legitimate reasons for time out or off.

2
We all live in and leave behind Horatio's skull.
Mortality is the only thing in common
most of us have once the ground

strips citizenship, gender and belief from us
and the skull is the grail cup left behind
to be found and lifted like a chalice

in loving memory of a person possibly worth knowing.

3
Couldn't it have been a little nicer?
Couldn't the world have been a little less
like Uncle Gerald after he returned home from the war?

Your Aunt Ruth says that once he hung up his uniform
there wasn't much of anything worth walking forward
with into the future the best part died to preserve.

4
There is someone I wanted to be
that mom and dad didn't have a hand in
or a clue to seeing in the mirror.

There is some One I wanted to be part of
that looked out of these eyes
and used these hands

to lift my empty skull from the grave
with a mind far emptier than death's
momentarily sharing a home

that was first and only place and prize.

5
I have a mother I spent the day with
the mother of our children
a home maker and a wife
a congenial being loved forever

and never said goodbye to.

--David Federman, Narberth, May 12, 2008