Happy Mother's Day

I wrote these just now, and they're in print, and intransit, enclosed in a couple of beautiful little cards, to Alaska and North Carolina...

A Mother's Day Sonnet:
For when you gave myself to me that day
You worked through pain and tears to show them why
A little boy to add to the bouquet
Is what the world needs up among the sky.
And ev’n through the bad grades and behavior
And all the sass and lip I gave to you
Your hugs and smiles and cookies were my savior,
The quiet nights in summer sunlight, too.
I know not how to pay back what you’ve giv’n
For I could live a lifetime, quite simply,
To try and fulfill that joyful burden
And pass on all the love that you gave me.
Our lives are short, painfully fleeting
But a Mother’s love is forever moving.


A Stepmother's Mother's Day Sonnet:
It couldn’t have been too easy to be a Mom
To those two kids who just showed up that night
Instructions? A handbook? Tried to stay calm
Would be a summ’r to remember, all right.
The fighting over covers and bed space,
The smelly shoe hunts from Duffy’s toe-jam,
From the nights at the yellow-brick-road place,
And real Cherry Cokes, the ocean where we swam.
You were the other side of my penny
The other way of seeing the ink blot
It was a summer as trying as any
But we needed you and the life that you brought
Because from Day One you were our Mother
And wouldn’t have been with anyone other.