I say to the named granite stone, to the brown grass,
to the dead chrysanthemums, Mother, I still have a
body, what else could receive my mind's transmissions,
its dots and dashes of pain? I expect and get no answer,
no loamy scent of her coral geraniums. She who is now
immaterial, for better or worse, no longer needs to speak
for me to hear, as in a continuous loop, classic messages
commanded. Here I am making, unmaking, doing, undoing.



About this poem
"I seldom visit my parents' grave-what would my message be, after leaving the pebble on their gravestone that says, 'I was here'? I am still material, I still make and do, but so do I unmake and undo. Do we all hear our mothers as long as we live?"
-Gail Mazur

About Gail Mazur
Gail Mazur is the author of "Figures in a Landscape" (University of Chicago Press, 2011). She teaches in the graduate writing program at Emerson College and splits her time between Cambridge and Provincetown, Mass.

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(c) 2015 Gail Mazur. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate