The poem for this past week comes from Ada Limón’s latest collection, The Carrying. Wow. It’s a beauty I hope you’ll seek out and read in full. The poems capture “carrying”–carrying the hope of wanting to be pregnant, the ache and distortion of scoliosis, the burden of grief, the joy of life, the shared condition of being human.
I chose this poem to honor mothers and the art and act of mothering which we often experience from women who aren’t our biological mothers, but who take time and care to mentor us in hope and grace, strength and courage, art and business, truth and beauty. So, here’s to all of those women who’ve nurtured us, who’ve taken us under their raincoats in such subtle and loving ways that we might not have even noticed it at the time.
As Limón says, “My god,/ I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her/ raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel/ that I never got wet.”
You can read the entire poem at the Academy of American Poets site, poets.org, where it’s been printed in full with permission.
In honor of Mother’s Day, my husband, Doug, created a poster for our front yard “installation” where we post a bit of a new poem each week. The art is his, the excerpt is Limón’s, the reverence is all of ours.
The featured image this week is a photo I took of a Mother’s Day jacaranda in full purple glory, nurtured by the rain and sun, in the Golden Hill neighborhood of San Diego. Happy celebration of Mother’s Day in honor of all the mothering we’ve received and given…all of those heartfelt raincoats.
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