THe good mother

susan alexander

I am a good mother. 

I drop everything for my full-blown daughter. 

The symphony. The appointment with the specialist. The good line. 

I welcome her acolytes – she rarely comes alone. 

I feed and clean and bend my back and am grateful for the presence 

of the Holy One of God who comes to visit at the time 

most opportune to her and the moon.

She sails into bay. I swim to meet her,

catch the mooring line with my teeth, 

tow her boat to the buoy I’ve bought just in case 

she arrives unannounced because I am a good mother. 

Entwined, we bingewatch Netflix zombie shows.

I spurn my world because she is my world my true and it’s she who is 

the mast of the mast and sheet of the sheet and the winch of the winch is she. 

I offer up muffins and tea and slow-cooked ribs. I ignore my husband 

who is not her father – whose service I left – 

who she is coming to resemble. 

Tonight she glows as if shining from within. 

Behold the tall taper of her burning. A lit roman candle 

I hold in my hands to show I am not afraid. 

To show that I am good. A good mother who will not say no

to anything she asks of me. I do not say no. 

I cannot say no. 

As a reed before a great wind am I to my daughter. 

Forgive me, forgive me, I cry in my heart 

all day long. In my kitchen, I eat the leftovers.

I don my seamless garment of white linen and walk through my house. 

See how she fills every room.

I place my muffins on the altar of her daughterness. 

I am the high priestess of the good mothers. 

I make sandwiches in the temple and wrap them in wax paper. 

She casts off on a windless morning, takes the air 

from my lungs to fill her sails, my guilt 

to flood the tide. 

Susan Alexander is a poet and writer living in British Columbia on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island, the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people. Susan’s work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines throughout Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. She is the author of two collections of poems, Nothing You Can Carry, 2020 and The Dance Floor Tilts, 2017, from Thistledown Press. Her suite of poems called Vigil won the 2019 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry while some of her other work has received the Vancouver Writers Fest and Short Grain awards.