I wrote this poem about my mom and my daughter back when winter was turning to spring, as I was thinking about generations and what is passed down to—and between—us. Even though it’s now coming on fall, the turn of a season made me think of it.
Enjoy!
My Mother’s Hands
A northern cardinal is the first
to announce spring,
a balm for the silence
that winter fastened to the trees.
Next, my two-year-old daughter
finds a maple seed
still wrapped in its brown coat, worn and thin,
and a green shoot is growing.
She asks to plant it.
“This seed’s perfect,” she says,
admiring her work.
Looking at her, I have to agree.
Now, maple seeds are growing
everywhere in the garden beds.
I pluck these tree-children out
from the parts of the yard I curate
into a garden
though I’m not entirely sure
I have the right to do so.
But then...this is the wonder
of spring, isn’t it?
For a few sweet months,
there will be an abundance,
a too-muchness,
a time when pulling a maple seed
does not feel like a diminishment
but an opening.
Abundance is in my daughter,
too, as her mind expands
to meet the world that
is also sprouting within her,
words and dreams and songs,
and so many moments that will
fall away like so many maple seeds:
failing to take root in her young memory.
But those moments live,
vibrant and perfect,
even in their brevity.
I see them light up her eyes.
I mean to say that spring is here
and all of us are made
of all that did and did not take root in us.
We are abundance.
We are openings.
After weeding the garden,
my hands, covered in dark soil,
become my mother’s hands.
The hands of a woman who labored in gardens.
Isn’t that strange? That I did not know
I had my mother’s hands until this earth
curved inside my fingernails
and this soil found the cracks in my skin?
And isn’t it a blessing
what we inherit and what we pass on
and how, even in this fleeting existence,
we are not deterred from reaching for sunlight?
I love this phrase: tree-children.
A beautiful poem, thank you Chelsea.
A really beautiful and thought provoking poem, Chelsea, thank you 💕