I receive daily poems in April through the poets.org website (you can sign up too!). Today’s poem, though clearly from another era (perhaps my childhood, or yours, or your mother’s), is also timeless in its essence. To mothers:
Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman
It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate
What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died
These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat
Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.
And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins
