Two Mothers Day Poems
So what’d you do in church today?
By Patrick O’Neill
So what’d you do in church today,
on this Sunday in May,
what did you celebrate,
sing about,
how did you pray?
What’d the preacher have to say
on this Sunday in May?
Well, let’s see.
We remembered you, Mom,
it being Mother’s Day.
And we said a prayer of thanks for Spring,
and lit candles for important things in our hearts.
Gratitude, remembrance, hope for dreams to come.
We sang too, that hymn you always liked.
And today, guess what,
we listened to jazz,
How worshipful is that?
What a church!
What is worship for,
do you suppose?
What calls us here on a Sunday in May
To hear the jazzmen play?
Does this count for liturgy,
do you think?
Do we get credit for church today?
Isn’t it great to think that maybe we do?
To think that maybe God is pleased
by every song we improvise,
by every “Be-Good-To-Mothers” Day,`
by every flower that blooms in May.
Isn’t it great to think
that faith is just that simple,
and that straight from the heart,
like a Sunday in May?
Someone say
Amen.
I never wrote a poem for my mother.
By Patrick O’Neill
Oh, for my wife, of course.
And for folks I hardly knew, oh sure.
For lesser loves and lesser lights,
For others only briefly passing through my life,
For such as these, indeed, I’d write for hours.
For presences much briefer in my life.
friends much less important, yes,
they received my free verse, freely given.
That was easier, it cost me no embarrassment
to give them my best words,
(intimate iambs and whispered spondees)
personally, privately, painfully
wrestled into place until the right sound
was coaxed from endless lines
indented just so on every page.
But never once for Momma.
I trust she knew that by the time I was a poet,
it was too late to give her something
so manly and so boyish at the same time.
What would she do with such a gift from me,
Hang it on her fridge for friends to see?
