June 24: Mother's Birthday, Peter Balakian, "My Mother is a Fish"

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday.  I believe that she is going to be 86.  You must forgive me.  I'm not good with birth dates.  I'm lucky that I remembered the day at all.

My mother's two remaining sisters have driven up from Detroit for the occasion.  It will be the first time in two or three years that they've all been together.  My mother doesn't know hat they're coming.  I'm hoping that she remembers them.

You see, my mother's memory isn't great.  She barely remembers my sister who lives in Washington.  When my sister was visiting last year, my mother kept looking at my sister and saying to me, "Isn't she a nice lady."  However, my mother seems to able to remember things from her childhood quite well.  Sometimes, she sits at the dining room table and tells me stories of when she was a little girl.  It's as if her long term memory is intact, but her short term memory is short circuiting.   I think that the only reason she remembers me is because I see her almost every day.

So, tonight, Saint Marty is honoring his mother with a poem by Peter Balakian.

"My Mother is a Fish"

by:  Peter Balakian

—Faulkner 

My mother is a fish

and the sky is low and orange,

and the long grass rises   

in the still air.

The mud is black   

and worms turn   

their cold segments   

at my feet.

      I used to walk   

      with an old lady.

      It seemed far from water

      and the ground sank.

      Weeds were higher

      than my head.   

      Slugs slept

      in the mud.

My mother is a fish

and the sky swallows my head.   

A fine rain comes

and softens the ferns.

In March before the crocus   

and the lily,

eggs bunch in the shoal   

of green jelly.

Crabs glide through them.   

A kingfisher is dead

on a rock.

My mother is an eel   

winding a light

around the rock.   

Even without a moon   

the black glows.

*

The sun grows like an egg

over the bridge,

the first birds are silver

and swoop down for my mother.

      When the lady came

      we jumped—

      She took us to find worms   

      we could squeeze

      in our hands.

      I went with my father

      to the dark water.

      I went with a bucket

      of mud.

      When we doubled the worm   

      on the hook and it coiled,   

      I could hear how a bass

      could thud.

      I grabbed it

      with a wet hand,   

      and watched its eye   

      go black

      as I dropped it

      in a metal bucket.

      Hack it along the gill

      and throw the head to the gulls.

My mother is a fish

and flutters in my bucket.   

The sky is a fleck of stones   

on the night water.

Turns my arms silver.

The wind calls my father   

out to where bigger birds   

call and caw and spin,

where my father goes

and leaves me with the mud   

and gulls on the patchy water.

My mom and dad