Andrea Potos Verse-Virtual 2018 February

February 2018

I am the author of 7½ collections of poetry. You can find my poems many places online and in print. What I love the most is sitting at my morning writing space, sometimes in a cafe, sometimes beside the lake, with my espresso and my stack of poetry books. That is church to me.

I HAVE NO POEMS FROM MY IRELAND TRIP BUT THIS ONE
- in Connemara -

We drove alongside bogs and heath, green
deepening to more green, low mists and rain-
seeped stones of the abbey, its gothic church
built for the memory of a mother and wife
gone too soon.
It was there I finally got through to my mother,
for the last time I did not know,
across the Atlantic, the air brought her small voice
crackling into a smile for me.
Now, months past, Ireland remains
buried in the turf of her leaving,
the peat of my heart
still burning.

FOR MY FRIEND WHO TOLD ME DON’T FETE THE DEAD

how can I tell him that every day I see her
smiling in her coral blouse, matching lipstick and her sunglasses,
sitting al fresco at our favorite Milwaukee cafe
while she orders her usual grilled cheese with avocado and tomato
with a side of pilaf she always wants
me to share and I say that’s okay Mom, thanks,
my garden salad is enough, which I can’t wait to finish
so that we may receive what she and I really came for,
what we have come here for every summer for so long
I can’t tell you when it began, here comes our waitress,
balancing two plates of blueberry pie plump and crustless,
they look like sapphires glistening in sun
beside hills of newly whipped cream, glory of the season,
of the light that does not die, of my beautiful summer mother.

WITH MY MOTHER AT HER CHEMO APPOINTMENTS

Past the sunflooded atrium,
through the swinging doors to
Infusion Bay, room four was our
favorite, nurse Brenda with her
luxurious curls, connecting the clear
plastic bag of potion (we’d joke) to
the port, that door, not far from my mother’s heart.
I found the chair beside her; she would lean back,
smile and sigh, the grace of her filling the air
through those three hours we were together,
I would breathe the stillness of presence, what
she taught me, hers and mine,
and the terror of not knowing,
all I could do was stay.

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