Maria's poem is the poem of the month on the MER website. MER is a literary journal about motherhood. MER promotes and celebrates the creative force of mother writers and artists through publications, performances, workshops, and online, at www.momeggreview.com
Snow Falls Thick
outside the windows of Saint Marguerite retreat house.
If only my mother had not died more than 20 years ago, I’d call her,
tell her, my practical, no-nonsense mother, to stop working
long enough to look out into the softening December world,
here in this peaceful place where no sound enters.
Memory, that savvy Trickster, pulls me back
to the 17th Street kitchen with its coal stove
and sweet, bread-baking aroma.
It is 1947. We are having a huge blizzard
and all the windows in our apartment frost over in patterns
that seem to me to be exquisitely beautiful.
My mother gives me a potato fresh from the oven.
I hold the hot potato, its crunchy skin, in my hand,
and I realize how much more my mother offered
when she gave me that warmth to hold in my hands.
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Originally published in MER 18 – “Home”
Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.
2 comments:
Maria tells us everything about family and love in so few words. A potato never felt so good.
Remembering the griddle coal stove, my grandmother baking the bread, the potatoes, all our meals...remembering the frosted window patterns, not even thinking that the heat in our house was leaking and being lost to the outside, just remembering that we were inside, warm and together, not thinking I would have this memory so many years later...
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