Another Poem For Mothers

Mother, I'm trying to write a poem to you— which is how most poems to mothers must begin—or, What I've wanted to say, Mother...but we as children of mothers, even when mothers ourselves, cannot bear our poems to them. Poems to mothers make us feel little again. How to describe that world that mothers spin and consume and trap and love us in, that spreads for years and men and miles? Those particular hands that could smooth anything: butter on bread, cool sheets or weather. It's the wonder of them, good or bad, those mother-hands that pet and shape and slap, that sew you together the pieces of a better house or life in which you'll try to live. Mother, I've done no better than the others, but for now, here is your clever failure.