A Mother’s Day
relaxes – kids are grown and gone
sometimes they call or text, even visit
no longer only pretending adulthood
having learned to cope
with what we can’t protect them from
the daily predictable and the unexpected
A stranger seated next to us on a plane
begins telling us details of her life
we who are not mothers have no purchase on
we listen, nod, smile or grimace
thinking: how can she endure?
we try to recall childhood theirs or ours
before we’d rearranged it forty times
There should be medals, we tell her
no matter, she answers
I have the scars
surprising herself and us
- DB
The Dog Star 
One Response to “A Mother’s Day”
Before we arranged it 40 times…indeed