Photograph of My Mother in Her Thirty-Sixth Year
This is now the second time I've done this exercise - to rewrite Raymond Carver's "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" using a photo of one of our own parents. The first time was in eighth grade with my batty-but-brilliant English teacher Ms Giles, for which I did my dad. This one we did just earlier this week with Ms Sayers, and for this one I used a picture of my mom during/after my christening (we were asked to do ones of our parents as young parents). And I'm actually fairly proud of my poem this time around...here's hoping that's justified.
--
April. Here in my cramped, bright room
I study my mother's blotchy woman's face.
Joyful smile, she holds me in her arms,
A tiny burden, newly christened
that day.
In a long rose-covered dress, she stands
among family at the front of my grandparents' church.
She would like to seem normal but glad,
Look perfect, unruffled like those around her.
All my life I've seen her as a paragon.
But the eyes give her away, and her face,
still patchily red and shiny, as if
she's been crying. Mom, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who smile the same way as you,
but don't know where to find that depth of emotion?
--
April. Here in my cramped, bright room
I study my mother's blotchy woman's face.
Joyful smile, she holds me in her arms,
A tiny burden, newly christened
that day.
In a long rose-covered dress, she stands
among family at the front of my grandparents' church.
She would like to seem normal but glad,
Look perfect, unruffled like those around her.
All my life I've seen her as a paragon.
But the eyes give her away, and her face,
still patchily red and shiny, as if
she's been crying. Mom, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who smile the same way as you,
but don't know where to find that depth of emotion?