Monday, May 11, 2009

Mothers Day 2009

A poem by a friend of mine.
His site is;

  • Feel Free To Read



  • Unstrung

    My flight as a projectile began in 1944.
    My mother was 17 years old,
    pregnant first at 15,
    veteran of a back room abortion,
    a real horror story in 1942;
    pregnant again at 16 with me;
    7 months pregnant when she saw Snoqualamie Pass
    for the first time, from the front seat of a Model A,
    watching my grandfather fix the fifth flat
    since leaving Spokane the day before;
    her mother already in Seattle, gone on ahead
    to work at Boeings, doing her part for the war effort,
    having spent Mother's Day alone.

    As a child, as an adolescent, Mother's Day
    didn't mean a hell of a lot to me,
    just another Hallmark moment, another day
    where presents could be purchased,
    and cards, and ribbons, and roses.

    But in 1966, when my mother was barely 39 years old,
    she died of uterine cancer,
    looking like an Auschwitz resident,
    with a ten pound tumor swelling her uterus,
    looking pregnant again, bravely awaiting
    to give birth to death.

    That was 43 years ago,
    and every Mother's Day since
    has grown more bittersweet.
    Mother, if I was the arrow that you projected
    out into this world
    with the all the strength and verve you could muster,
    then you became the stringless bow
    of my dreams and misty memories;
    a lovely face from a few photographs,
    always with that flower in your hair.

    Tomorrow your day arrives again,
    and that knot of pain in my chest
    will come, swell, and ebb,
    as it has always done,
    as it shall continue to do, until
    our reconciliation.

    I have let these days come and go
    in silence, with a sad smile,
    but not this one. No,
    I celebrate the 22 Mother's Days
    we shared in my ignorance and arrogance,
    and Mother who can hear me--
    I love you.
    Thanks for being my bow.


    Glenn Buttkus May 2009



    To be perfectly honest here, thinking about my mother just pisses me off for some reason.

    4 Comments:

    Blogger Glenn Buttkus said...

    Thank you for posting my little ditty to mother. The problem with your Mom, Marge, is that when we were teenagers, she always seemed to like me best. Of course, the 50 years that have spread out since those angst-filled days of raging adolescent hormones might be dulling my recall.

    I really pulled the stops out for Mother's Day over on FFTR, enit?

    How about my latest poet on the site--George Bilgere? He kind of tells it like it is, or was, or might be. I am really flashing on my retirement these days, thinking about getting into some poetry slam contests, getting back into performance art. Nobody reads my poetry like I do, spreading the nuances on thick. I am probably full of shit, but somehow I think it will go well with me in front of an audience. I did it a few times when Melva had me going to church on a regular basis, and it felt good, somehow familiar.

    I am smiling a lot these days. Amazing how coming out of some eye surgery with a positive result can color your world, and flood your emtions. I got onto Ebay this AM, and was happy to see that I won the 2001 Chevron breast awareness car. It was the first one in the series, and damned hard to find. This one is in Hawaii. We have a wonderful friend who is a breast cancer survivor, and I bought her the 2007 car, and she loved it; put it in her China cabinet. Then I gave her the 2008, and she beamed with emotion. Then snooping around at Cheveron stations, I found the 2003 & 2004 models. To have the whole 8 cars is quite a feat. Chevron only makes one run of these cars, and they are quite the collector's items. So a couple months ago in one of my manic phases I got onto Ebay and found the 2002, 2005, and 2006 cars, but the first one, the original, the 2001 eluded me. When it arrives from Honolulu I will be able to take all them to Miss Ruby and feel like I've done a good thing. The whole collection now is worth several hundred bucks. They cost 7 bucks when new.

    I have an executive committee meeting for the TFC tonight. It is the least fun I have with the club. I just am not the administrative type. But year after year went by as just a member, and I bitched my head off about this policy, and this choice, and finally Melva informed me that I needed to get off my ass and do something about it. People being what they are, as soon as I came on strong, willing to do all the extra crap, they just let me do so. Now I am the club, and the club is me. We have 100 folks who come intermittently, and 55 paid members; small time I know compared to the Seattle Film Society, or the one in Olympia; they even own their own movie theater.

    Glenn

    5:58 AM  
    Blogger Jannie Funster said...

    Major tears in my eyes over this one, really got me at the knot of pain in his chest.

    And the pissed-offedness at the end, very real, very honest.

    Greatness touched down in this poem.

    Stringless bow, wow.

    9:09 AM  
    Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Hallo, Lane!
    Thanks for printing Glenn's excellent paeon to his Mom.
    Tschuess,
    Anonomann
    P.S. As one can tell from the English keyboard (as opposed to the German one with its Umlaut keys) I did reach Seattle yesterday, despite the incompetence of SAS for not informing me of the cancellation of its flight yesterday from Copenhagen to Seattle -- and thanks to Lufthansa's excellent customer service people at Hamburg Airport, who spent MUCH time and effort to get me to Seattle, anyway, yesterday), I did make it, though literally "at the last minute", reaching Redwing only 45 minutes before midnight.

    1:36 PM  
    Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Thanks, Glenn!
    For your very moving poem about your mother; I'm VERY glad someone had a great Mom; I certainly did NOT!
    Tschuess,
    Anonomann

    1:38 PM  

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