I have many mothers
watching over me as if I was
still in a pink blankets with lambs on it
still coming out of my mother
still swaddled in 9 months of internal caul.
My mother's morals are instilled in me
along the lines of don't trust men
listen to women
love the earth
listen to yourself
even when you don't trust yourself
even when you don't know who you are
except when they
(the mothers)
tell you differently.
My mother's stories are about
sex in saunas
lighters lost in cleavage
marriage at 18
pregnancy
cancer, and the love of their fathers.
I have been compartmentalized for my mothers
I tell one about my life at home
one about my health
one about school.
My moods for my mother are changed
by the days
I spend without them.
I have songs for my mothers
Janis Joplin
Joni Mitchell
Peter Frampton.
There are books for my mothers
Vonnegut
life after death
Nietzsche
I wrote poems for their addictions
light beers, the 60s, free love
Montana, gardening, drumming
leopard print, the 80s.
They tell me about funerals
their parents
friends
brothers in law
I hope to take one's calmness
one's sense of reason
one's emotional endurance.
Even as the mothers draw form me
my laughter
my ability to listen
my compliance to suggestion
so that i am a mother to them too.