by Molly Engel

by Andrea Potos

It Happens Sometimes,
                   for Mom

I’ll be walking my coral bike along
the lakeshore path after a morning of writing poems
because I want to linger near the water longer
than riding will allow, and my long cotton dress
swishes around my legs in a pleasant tickling sensation
while the wind riffles the water’s surface into silvery
blue and I think of my mother, her buoyant smile
and her signature Revlon hot coral lipstick that I just applied fresh
to my own lips, and the loveliness of her being begins to sneak up on me
and I keep walking while she suddenly becomes me or I
become her, I don’t know which, I carry her with me everywhere.

 *** 

When She Would Call Me

Remembering whenever the telephone rang,
on the other side of the line, she
always identified herself
as if there were other emblems
of kindness in the air that needed to be
discerned, as if there was any other
embodiment of home
in the world for me,
in the hammock of her three words:
It’s Mom, honey.