REFLECTIONS
In my mother’s mirror with its faux
Ivory, celluloid handle and backing,
I am looking for her, and I see some
Of her and some of my father’s face.
I ask myself why it is that I,
Their only child, should have striven
Always to differ from their prescriptives,
Always to escape their vigilant directives.
Was it the sound of my mother crying
Every Saturday night and emerging late
And red-eyed on Sunday mornings?
Or was it the summer she took the car
And we drove to her friend’s cottage in Hampton
For a week on the shore before we came back
To the boy scout camp my father directed
And they stared at each other while I watched?
Or perhaps I knew at my father’s funeral
To which his handsome, never-married waterfront
Director came, why his grief was greater
Than mine and why the siblings I longed for
Had never arrived. And so I determined
That my sons would have brothers
And my daughters would have sisters,
And their parents would be truly a pair.
So much does my mother’s mirror
Show me as I look for her face
And some of the face of my father
And find at last only my own face.
(March, 2014)