Songs in the car, my mother’s mellow contralto
The white fringe of birches framing Lake Chocorua
Her trudge up the Jewell Trail wearing a dress:
Calling out blazes on granite slabs
Spying the next cairn, the misty channel
Marker – or so I like to recall although
In truth my father may have been ahead.
How I resented the leash that reined me to them
After my toddler’s wobble toward the road
Where Model T’s jolted like windup toys.
The clothesline pulley ran me like a dog.
I was the bass my father trolled for what
Seemed hours in lucid lakes of northern Maine.
“You are all we’ve got, ” he often said
Spanking me whenever I crossed the street.
Today my mother came home from the hospital
Short of breath, unsure of the order of pills.
I cooked and laundered, fetched her water and kleenex
And snapped at the choke chain tightening on my neck
The way our shepherd balks at the door of the pen
Until we looked at curling photographs:
Her home-made lacy graduation dress
The boy with his bicycle twenty-five miles from home.