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My Mother's Old Bowl
By Michael S. Smith
We washed and dried the dishes handily,
Old-fashionedly, cleaning up on Mom's
Long labors to feed us like hot hungry
Field hands. It came back to us like a welcome
Home, or a bicycle ride you can't forget
After years in the wagon. Towels hung
To dry as I swiped Mom's water like sweat
Hanging from the washed out plates that clung
Cracked and chipped to their mistress's stacked pile
Like crucial memories fading. Near the end
Of the outdated chore, I held a bowl
So webbed with fractures it touched my hand
In every pore, the bowl I ate ice cream
From as a boy, when I could, and green beans
With bacon fat, corn sliced off cobs and I seemed
To see us forty years ago, Mom a smooth-skinned
Plump beauty with neither cracks nor flaws,
And no time to dream someday an old man
Would dry these dishes or drape an arm like a shawl
On bent shoulders who stood hugging her waist then.