Maternal

By Gail Mazur b. 1937 Gail Mazur

On the telephone, friends mistake us now

when we first say hello—not after.

And that oddly optimistic lilt

we share nourishes my hopes:

we do sound happy. . . .

Last night, in my dream’s crib,

a one-day infant girl.

I wasn’t totally unprepared—

there was the crib, and cotton kimonos,

not just a padded dresser drawer.

And then, I knew I could drive

to the store for the tiny, funny

clothes my daughter wears.

I was in a familiar room

and leaned over the rail, crooning

Hello, and the smiling baby—

she’d be too young for speech,

I know, or smiles—

gurgled back at me, Hullo.

—If I could begin again,

I’d hold her longer, closer!

Maybe that way, when night opens

into morning, and all my windows

gape at the heartbreaking street,

my dreams wouldn’t pierce so,

I wouldn’t hold my breath

at the parts of my life still in hiding,

my childhood’s white house

where I lunged toward the flowers of love

as if I were courting death. . . .

Over the crib, a mobile was spinning,

bright birds going nowhere,

primary colors, primary

as mothering once seemed. . . .

Later, I wonder why I dreamt

that dream, yearning for what I’ve had,

and have

why it was my mother’s room,

the blonde moderne bedroom set

hidden under years of junk—a spare room’s

the nicest way to put it,

though now all

her crowded rooms are spare—

Source: The Common (The University of Chicago Press, 1995)

Biography

After nearly 13 years of apprenticing herself to poetry, during which she studied with Robert Lowell and immersed herself in the Boston/Cambridge literary scene, Mazur published her first collection, Nightfire (1978), at age 40. Other books include The Pose of Happiness (1986); They Can’t Take That Away from Me (2001); and Zeppo’s First Wife: New & Selected Poems (2006). Tess Taylor, interviewing Mazur for the Atlantic Monthly . . .

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