My Island Mother by Laura Margosian
Laura Margosian writes with lush lyricism about the month of May and formative visits with her mother on Martha’s Vineyard. She conveys the wistfulness and longing which many of us feel as we approach Mother’s Day and the season of summer. While doing so, Laura illustrates the concept of Motherhood through our surroundings of the natural world.
She wakes me with her May call
summoning my return.
Soaring geese overhead
breaking ground.
My Island Mother
gathering spices and gin,
for her “favorite place on earth.”
Dashing off we’d go in the fading yellow Volvo
to catch the last ferry boat,
where I’d soon be lapping away
the burning days in her gurgling tide,
with Mother watching from the sand
my sparkling eyes and swelling hips
like the lines of the seashore,
she sheltered my innocence
and held my pain.
There nesting in her east pasture
of morning glories’ slumbering vines,
in that pause between
the bite of spring
and what May come…
I'd steal onto the salt-worn porch
perched at the edge of earth
in her dewy blush,
and bathe in her blackness
moon ladled path
spilling across Menemsha pond
and took night watch.
All was kept and quiet
tucked into her lap of sunken days
she knew I'd returned
and never had left
the rolling dirt roads,
wide-eyed and watched
by the red-tail hawk,
recalling me from decades ago
bare backed on hazy cliffs,
weaving dune grass, brambles & beach plums.
We held each other again,
my island mother
cloaked in her beaming blue, burnt crimsons
and goldenrod,
blanketed by her lullaby,
she caressed my brow
and carried my prayer.
There in her up-island pasture,
butter bees and chirping swallows
penetrating gaps in the torn screen
of the wind-worn porch,
window to the horizon
of shifting tides…
Of a lover’s first embrace
a kiss planted on an August night rain,
secrets shared in the lap of an afternoon wicker chair,
fish stew densities simmering at dusk,
enduring love permeates
like an unspeakable ghost
wakes me tenderly to greet the dawn…
And in the wide night between
I'd slide from under his quilt
of safekeeping dreams
casting krill & biting gulls,
ribbons of wind-swept sails
propelling me onto the night porch,
to gaze upon flickering lights
lingering candles on the horizon,
stirred by the familiar haunting bell
whispering her ebb & flow…
And with the lure of the brackish-water’s edge
I’d bluster down the thorny sun-steeped hill
where once a lover covered me
with his smile,
to find beach scrubs, horseshoe crabs, and anchors
inhabiting the timeless shore,
where my island mother
will always be…
calling me
home.
Photographs of Martha’s Vineyard, by Laura Margosian
Laura Margosian © 2016, revised.
For my beautiful Mother, Linda, and the Martha’s Vineyard Island she taught me to love.
