by Alan Hanson

My mother left when I was ripe
and I couldn’t gestate
what kind of absence
that could breed; a subtraction
of moments like
when I once hugged her
so hard, flushed,
so scared, hush,
that the rhythm of her heart
felt more familiar
than anything ever
because I remembered, in her,
being grown
and being home.

I often fumed jealousy
watching robed graduates
gripping tight their mothers
knowing surely they felt
the beat of the womb
and that every time,
every drumming hug,
felt like the beginning
and how I could
never return.

Later, when she was replaced,
on a train across a deep gorge
in Colorado, my new one,
overcome with some simple emotion,
some acceptance of her new family,
brought my chest so close to hers
squeezed so tight my blinking life
that my glasses broke
smashed against her collarbones
as she wept fully
into the engine’s smoky drones.
 
It took me years to realize
that at the moment
she broke down
because she wasn’t
like I thought,
a stone,
but after years of searching
she had finally found
a home.