May 2020

Earlier this week, as I was heading out for a walk, I suddenly realized why May is the perfect month to celebrate mothers. Mothers and their babies seem to be everywhere in the natural world right now. Where I live - and take my walks - the local marsh is home to colonies of Canada Geese, and the mothers among them currently are parading their downy newborns in single-file formations around the neighborhood. I smile behind my COVID mask each time I see them.

This month poet Laura Margosian writes with lush lyricism of remembered visits with her own mother on Martha’s Vineyard. In so doing, she conveys the wistfulness and longing which many of us also are feeling as we approach that “Second-Sunday-in-May” holiday this year.

MY ISLAND MOTHER

-For my beautiful Mother, Linda, and the

Martha’s Vineyard island she taught me to love.

By Laura Margosian

She wakes me with her May call

summoning my return.

Soaring geese overhead

to breaking ground.

My lovely mother

gathering her 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,

as my sparkling eyes turned to budding hips;

like the lines of the shore,

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 early 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 had never left,

down rolling dirt roads,

wide-eyed and watched

by the red-tail hawk,

recalling me from decades gone;

bare-backed on hazy cliffs,

weaving meadow grass, brambles & beach plums.

We held each other again,

My island mother;

cloaked in beaming blue, burnt crimsons

and spinning gold;

blanketed by her soft lullaby,

she caressed my brow

and carried my prayer.

There in her up island east pasture,

butter bees and chirping swallows

penetrating gaps in the torn screen

of the wind-worn porch;

window to the horizon

of shifting tides…

With a lover’s first embrace:

a kiss planted on an August night rain,

a secret shared in an afternoon wicker chair,

fish stew promises simmering at dusk.

Enduring love permeates

like an unspeakable ghost,

wakes me tenderly to greet the dawn…

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 to the night porch,

to gaze on distant lights

lingering like candles-on the horizon,

stirred by the familiar haunting bell

whispering her ebb & flow.

And with the nod of tradition

blustering down the thorny sun-steeped hill

to stony, brackish-water’s edge,

where a once lover covered me

with his smile.

Beach scrubs, horse shoe crabs, and anchors

along the beckoning shoreline;

where my Island mother

will always be-

calling me

home.

Laura Margosian is a life-long student of integrative wholistic health and recently joined the path of her pioneering mother and sister as a certified yoga instructor.  Her long-time professional career includes developing and directing academic tutoring and college mentoring programs for the Cambridge public schools. She holds a bachelor’s of liberal arts in cultural anthropology from Antioch College. She enjoys co-hosting curated feasts and is passionate about artistic food blogging and culinary anthropology. Laura has lived on Martha’s Vineyard throughout various periods of her life and all seasons. She has been writing poetry since charmed by her high school creative writing teacher, with whom she still exchanges working drafts to this day. Her work has appeared in various publications, and she received the Armenian Allied Arts Association award for her poem about impressionist painter, Arshile Gorky. Laura plans to publish a collection of her poems, many inspired by love, longing, and the seasons.