VISITATION RIGHTS

I write poems.
I speak out.
Power returns.
Body unknots.

But what's a word
in court of law?
What's legal aid
against his money?

The terms are fair.
They are not met.
What's a decree
against the fact:

the kids are there
and I am here. Every
other weekend I wait
for them to come.

I said nothing for fear
of not seeing them at
all. I complied, I

compromised, I let
them break their
commitments to come.

What I did did not
matter. They came or
not. I have nothing
more to lose. So I

write this book for
you who are also
alone, without a word.



SAFE BET

I pledged if I lost the case
I would write like mad.
If I won, I would not.

When I lost I could not.
Until I wrote myself
out of dissolution,
disillusionment,
toward my own
authority.

A solution I claim
to move on.



THE GAIN

The loss is not
that I chose to create
this mess. I accept
that set-up somehow
though I might have
managed it better.

The loss is recurring
upset. Once is never
enough in the process
of letting go. Again.

The loss is never
growing around fear
or grief or rage.

The gain is a web
woven around empty.

The gain contains.
Mother and child. No
way but through loss.

The pattern closes on
the hole of that loss.



FINALLY

What is there left to mother but
my own despair, my own unquiet body?

Who else for me to comfort?
Who else to comfort me?

Only the full embrace of
loss will bind me. Empty
armed. But tighter now
than any other love.

Nothing but loss could show me.
Nothing but loss complete me.

For giving. Forgiving.



POWER PLAYS

I admit manipulation,
rigidity, pride.
Received assumptions
of right action.

I act as if I still
controlled the children.
I do not.

Telling them
what to do, when.
They don't have to.

I lose the face
of my own authority.
I who never did
what I was told.

I wheedle, sulk,
coerce, blame, try
to persuade.

The tyrant in me
is tireless but
unconvincing.

I lose face.

What choice is there
now but a rough
humility, a ruthless
contemplation of
events.



AFTER LOOSE ENDS

For all the mothers
in the thick of things
who let an era end
when it is time.

For attending that time,
its need and variation.
The fullsome, the fresh
equinox harvest, entry
into the sacred half.
The falling silence.

For the mothers so soon
free to grieve, knowing
the house is waiting.

For the empty well-made
beds, the spoiling food.
For the toys disappeared,
the floor quickly swept.

For the mothers who bide
the time suddenly theirs
when all is in order. All.



WHAT I DIDN'T TAKE INTO ACCOUNT

Things the children needed or
wanted. Things I thought I (we)
could do just as well without.

A poverty of things I liked.
I lacked. Some things. No
thing. Just enough heat if
we gathered driftwood for fires.

Just enough food to last
from what I had preserved
till the end of the month.

Always enough second-hand
clothes, some of them quite
nice, I thought. Never any
extras, but who needs extras?

I liked a poverty of things.
I bound my children to be
poor of necessity. And of
choice. We always got by.

We were always so much richer
than they (brown faces)(black).
What right had we to more?
No right but the kids' desire.



THE MOTHERS OF PERU

Remember those other mothers,
those whose children disappeared
under the sea, in earthquakes,
in prison camps and uprisings.

Those whose babies are dying
too starved or sick to cry.
Remember their question, their
plea, and what could I do?

The river water ran typhoid
but was delivered by truck
and most mothers bottle-fed
encouraged by plump ads.

Remember their resignation.
The terrible passivity that
might have been acceptance
if they weren't so tired.

Remember those children dead
of diseases mine shrugged off.
Measles. A fever. Coughing.

Those are my children too.

Picture my own, playing and
squabbling, safe. And be glad
for them.



GENERATION GAPS

So I can wait out the years
before you return to show me
who you are, what you can do.

I give up needing you
before you come back.

You know where I am and how
to get here. It would not
matter if I were closer.
Home is the boundary we chose.

Already I am obsolete, betting
on the past like that, when
nothing then prepares for now.

I write you stories of great-
grandmothers and their antics
for you to tell your children.

Your attention is the present.
I know you must choose to be
where you live. To forget for
now. I am here.



PASSING

Idling in the passage of kids,
the present is lost between
memories and predictions.
Whom do they take after? What
will they become? We forget
the space that dropped out
in the presence of children.

We thought we were twenty.
We wake up forty. Worn
with the weight of unlived
years. One morning we are
mothers. By noon we are not.

The time it takes to turn
to other things.