To Mother Poem by Michael Pruchnicki

There is a forest preserve near where I live-
an open place where carloads of city dwellers
converge to celebrate and to commemorate
on Sundays in May with friends and family
among green oak and tall spruce
at common pine picnic tables.

Mahogany-hued women in bright sarees
cluster with children around volleyball nets
set up in fields. Accents of India hover
and move light as gossamer through groves
and impart haunting musical tones
to a spring day.

Stout ruddy-faced men sit in lawn chairs
talking politics and life in the old country
when they were young. Kielbasa sizzles
on grills in this new world as their children
play softball and only matriarchs wear babushkas!

Lithe women from Yucatan and the Sierra Madre
ladle steaming beans onto corn tortillas-
teen bravos eye slender girls in jeans,
sighs and giggles-'Pela mi corazon! '
But no tears are shed and broken hearts mend!

Clouds of charcoal smoke rise over groves
as boom-boxes blast and the strains of
'La Cucaracha' bugle high overhead!

My heart sings
'I'll be seeing you! '

I see deer poised in the shadows,
ghostly in fading light

We pause, my dog and I-
she looks up with canine regard
as though to ask something profound-

Twilight dims the sight-
Mother dear, the ghost of you clings!