Turn Thanks to Mother
            with two lines from Lorna Goodison
by Wilda Morris

Mother aspired to perfect parenthood, something
experience tells me is impossible. If it is true
to be perfect in whatsoever you are called to do
is counted in heaven as sincere prayer,

it also must be true that heaven honors
good intentions, forgives slip ups,
like the time Mother missed the bus to church,
bidding Sis and me to run ahead and waved
from a block and a half away, telling us to board;
and even those small explosions, plate tectonics
from a dissolved marriage, ignited periodically
by our childish pranks or churlishness.

Mother’s guides were grandmother, the Bible
as she understood it, and a book entitled
Mother, Teacher of Religion. She swaddled us
in love. We snuggled together in bed as she read
A Child’s Book About Jesus, Away Went Tippy,
Polly Patchwork and The Wizard of Oz,
fell asleep as she sang “The Bicycle Built for Two,”
or “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral, That’s An Irish Lullaby.”

She cocooned us with protective limits, lived
kindness and honesty, took us to the Baptist Church,
signed us up for Mennonite Bible School.
To Mother and all who parent alone, I give thanks
for long days of working at work and working
at home, nights of lost sleep, and the prayer
of good intentions partially fulfilled.



Italicized lines are from “Turn Thanks to Grandmother Hannah,” in Turn Thanks: Poems by Lorna Goodison
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1999), p. 14.



 

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