My good mother (ghazal)

I’m a bad mother, my good mother said to me

Snug and wild as she steadily read to me

Worrying over skim milk, my thin mother called herself fat

Handing down thick-food calorie dread to me

I’m lazy and wicked, my tired mother said, up at dawn

Boiling kettles. Her whip-judgment spread to me

I never did what mothers are supposed to, said mine,

Best of all possibles. Such goofy love fed to me

She could not remember presidents or politics

Oh but sonnets and songs she gave instead to me

Late she told me, I never know what to say fast enough

Clouds of sweet honey, breath of warm bread to me

You turned out all right after all, said my confusing mother

I wonder still what frankness was left unsaid to me