Monday poem

This was one of the poetry selections by the American Academy of Poets for Mother’s Day–it seems to me a sort of love poem from a mother to a teenage child. I like its strange title.

Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits

tonight I’m cleaning baby portobellos
for you, my young activist

wiping the dirty tops with a damp cloth
as carefully as I used to rinse raspberries

for you to adorn your fingertips
before eating each blood-red prize

these days you rarely look me in the eye
& your long shagged hair hides your smile

I don’t expect you to remember or
understand the many ways I’ve kept you

alive or the life my love for you
has made me live

Rachel Zucker

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