Mother Poem #9
by Ellen June Wright
I hope when I hear of my mother’s death
I can wail Hold on my child joy comes in the morning
words floating up from uncharted fathoms
not overcome by what I lost, grateful for what I had.
I hope I can trumpet the news of mother’s passing,
glory in her life so man-complicated and so long,
remember that a woman can start life with so little
and through steely strength, dumb perseverance,
ignorant of what it means to surrender,
and a mustard-seed-like faith survive and even
overcome, never becoming a failed statistic.
I hope I'm filled with joy at the thought of life lived
by a woman who never intended to be a Titan
but simply slipped into the shoes and wore them.
Ellen June Wright is a poet based in Hackensack, New Jersey. She was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She attended school in NJ and taught high school language arts for three decades. She has worked as a consulting teacher on the guides for three PBS poetry series called Poetry Haven, Fooling with Words, and the Language of Life. Her poetry has most recently been published in River Mouth Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, New York Quarterly, The Elevation Review, The Caribbean Writer and, is forthcoming in, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week and was featured in the article, Exceptional Prose Poetry From Around the Web: June 2021. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest and is a founding member of Poets of Color virtual poetry workshop in New Jersey. She studies writing at the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Ellen can be found on Twitter @EllenJuneWrites.
About this poem, she writes, “My mother was born in 1925, so she is just a few years away from being 100. I’ll be grief stricken when she’s gone, if I outlive her, but I hope I’ll also remember what a gift it was to have her live so long. Not many people get to have a life that spans close to a century. I am grateful for each and every day of her triumphant life.”