Mothers

“Mothers” is composed of unrhymed free verse, organized in six stanzas of varying length. The poem has a first-person point of view. The speaker travels back and forth in memory, adopting an adult perspective in the beginning, followed by a childhood recollection, and returning once again to adulthood in the final lines. As the reader cycles through time with the speaker, the reader comes to understand the first moment the child really sees her mother as an individual, as well as “a beautiful lady” (Line 26).

The first stanza of “Mothers” comprises a single phrase setting a peaceful, ordinary scene. The speaker returns to pay a visit to her mother. The tone suggests two adults fondly greeting one another before settling into their own habits and concerns: They “kissed / exchanged pleasantries” (Lines 2-3) and retired to their “separate books” (Line 6). If there is any strife at all, it remains at a comfortable distance, the world’s hard edges wrapped up in the formal word choice of “unpleasantries” (Line 4).

In the second stanza, the speaker leaps back in time to a different home—a “three room / apartment on burns avenue” (Lines 9-10). Here, the speaker says, is “the first time / i consciously saw her” (Lines 7-8). The memory describes a significant moment of growth and understanding, the first conscious realization that the child is a separate entity from the parent. In the third stanza, the speaker realizes she already understands something unique about her mother, that she “always sat in the dark” (Line 11)—an action the speaker understands as habitual, though she can’t say “how” (Line 12) she knows this.

The fourth stanza begins with a description of a young child stumbling “into the kitchen” (Line 13) and coming upon her mother “sitting in a chair” (Line 17). The memory doesn’t bring much self-awareness—perhaps, the speaker muses, she’d “been / a night person” (Lines 14-15), or perhaps she’d “wet / the bed” (Lines 15-16). That detail may be lost to memory, but the way the room looked in that moment of discovering her mother, sitting still in a dark room remained vivid: “[T]he room was bathed in moonlight diffused through / those thousands of panes” (Lines 18-19). The speaker has drawn a picture of a small urban apartment “on burns avenue” (Line 10), with what might be wired glass in the windowpanes, common to 20th century construction and known as safety glass. The “thousands of panes” (Line 19) may refer to the individual hexagons of the wire pattern. Metaphorically, a woman sitting alone in the dark may be experience a thousand pains, or she may be thinking about them.

The windows are the type that “landlords who rented / to people with children were prone to put in” (Line 19-20). These lines establish the family as renters of the “three room / apartment” (Lines 9-10), as opposed to homeowners. That the landlord puts in reinforced glass indicates that with children comes extra consideration, extra precautions, and extra responsibility.

The speaker recalls, “she may have been smoking but maybe not” (Line 21)—smoking was something adults did—and the speaker’s mother did—but that detail is not clear. It may be the other was engaging in no other activity but sitting in the dark, “very deliberately waiting” (Line 27). What the speaker remembers most exactly is her mother’s hair: “three-quarters her height […] and very black” (Lines 22-24). The long hair puts the speaker in mind of Samson, Hebrew judge of the Old Testament of the Bible whose uncut hair provided the strength to defend the ancient Israelites against the Philistines. In that moment, the speaker sees her mother as powerful; that power is derived from the qualities of being long, and “very black” (Line 24). At this point in the poem, the speaker is drawing attention to the idea of legacy, through the metaphor of the mother’s long, uncut hair, and to Black power.

The fifth stanza underscores the speaker’s discovery that her mother is a separate being, and a “beautiful lady” (Line 26). The speaker holds her mother in high esteem and admires her.

In stanza six, the speaker is sure that her mother is waiting, but can only speculate for what she’s waiting—“perhaps for my father to come home / from his night job” (Lines 28-29), or “maybe for a dream” (Line 29). The language doesn’t make it clear whether the father works more than one job or a single job that occurs at night. Either way, the realities of making a living can involve a night shift. The other possibility is that the mother is thinking about what might have been, her own aspirations and the “dream / that had promised to come by” (Lines 29-30). Here, the speaker acknowledges that her mother may have an inner life that holds more than her reality.

At this point the mother speaks, calling her child to her. She teaches her “a poem” (Line 32)—an excerpt from an Irish lullaby about the moon: “[I] see the moon / the moon sees me / god bless the moon / and god bless me” (Line 32-35). The poem establishes a relationship between the self and the world, sanctioned by “god” (Line 34). It is also art, and a thing of beauty, that the mother passes on to the speaker, who in turn teaches it to the next generation: “i taught it to my son” (Line 36), “who recited it for her” (Line 37).

In the sixth stanza, the speaker moves from childhood back to adulthood and into her own role as a mother. Here, the speaker illustrates the intergenerational connection between her mother, herself, and her child. The speaker takes the reader from the solitude of a wait in the dark, moonlit kitchen, to the fullness of what it means to play a part in one’s own legacy and history. The “pleasures” (Line 39) may be quieter and more subtle that the “pains” (Line 40), which may demand more psychic and physical attention. It is upon everyone, the speaker says, to acknowledge joy—particularly in connection. It is a responsibility human beings have to each other, and to themselves.