Thanking My Mother for Checking Out Poetry by Judith Sornberger

I see you in the new suburban branch library
on a hot July afternoon like the ones when
we were kids and came home early from the pool
to visit the library with you. Back then it was in
an old church, the air smelling of sacred mustiness
in the semi-darkness. You’d head to Adult Fiction
while each daughter found her favorite section—
for me Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton.
We’d meet at the circulation desk with our bounty—
a bundle of six books each. Talk about amazing grace!
Two decades later you’ve found your way to Poetry,
a single shelf, probably half empty, hoping to solve a mystery—
why a daughter of yours would follow a love of writing poems
to grad school when she’s a single mother with two kids
to support. I wish I could see the titles before you.
I hope you’ll find Whitman, whose poems are bighearted
as you. Nature mystic that you are, maybe Dickinson
and Frost. Clifton since you love living in a woman’s body.
Brooks for music leading to new neighborhoods.
A nice collection of haiku perhaps, and I think you’d get a kick
out of cummings. Please let there be no Plath.
She would only make you worry, and you’ve worried enough
about your eldest daughter who fell for this aisle
of words you’re following her into.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net