The Next Line: Mother's Day
- andy bauman
- May 3
- 3 min read
While thinking about what to write for this week’s edition for Mother’s Day, I remembered how much my mom liked listening to NPR, and especially Garrison Keillor’s, Prairie Home Companion. Since many of you probably enjoy him as well, this gave me the idea to search for a Mother’s Day poem by Garrison to share with all of you. While it’s not a poem, I found an article he wrote titled, Let’s Talk About You and Your Mother, published on April 25, 2006. I also selected three poems written by other authors that honor mothers. To keep this column to an appropriate length, I only chose an excerpt of Garrison’s article, but I included a QR code and web page you can visit to read the complete article. (In the excerpt I put the correct date). Happy Mother’s Day!
Let’s Talk About You and Your Mother
Garrison Keillor
“…I bring this up well in advance of Mother’s Day so you can plan a little bit and not roll out of the sack on SUNDAY, MAY 10, and fritter away the morning and then dash over to Mom’s and on the way pick up a cheap box of chocolate-covered cherries at the gas station, or a gallon of windshield cleaner, or whatever you were planning to give her.
Cheap chocolates are not appropriate for your mother, nor is a bouquet of daisies marked down 50 percent at the convenience store. What you owe your mother is a sonnet. A fourteen-line poem, in iambic pentameter, rhymed, just like Shakespeare’s “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcaste state.” Look it up. You can do it, if you try.
Your mother loves you, she has loved you from Day 1, she loves you on your good days and your bad. She was on her way to Broadway and Hollywood was taking a look at her when your father got her in a family way and she put glamour and fame behind her and had you instead…”
As promised, here are three poems that honor moms on their special day. Enjoy.
What She Can
Steve Lucas
A cowboy’s mom does what she can
To turn her boy into a man
With her love and a soft touch.
She’s well aware that there isn’t much
Time for her to impart
Into her son her loving heart,
Before there comes that fateful day
When she knows he’ll ride away
To seek his fortune in a way of living
That is hard and unforgiving
Crude and lonely, rough and wild
It breaks her heart to think her child
Could wind up like old men she’s known
Crude and broken, all alone
So she prays for him every night,
And that her words are the right
Ones to show how he should live his life
And maybe find a cowboy’s wife
To love him just as she has done.
And she hopes her cowboy son
Will call or write her just to say
I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day
God’s Masterpiece
Herbert Farnham
God took the fragrance of a flower,
The majesty of a tree,
The gentleness of morning dew,
The calm of a quiet sea.
The beauty of the twilight hour,
The soul of a starry night,
The laughter of a rippling brook,
The grace of a bird in flight.
Then God fashioned from these things,
A creation like no other,
And when his masterpiece was through,
He called it simply - Mother.
On the Shores of Jubilee
Lynn Casstevens
Lord, are there roses in your garden
On the shores of jubilee
Would you pick a dozen of your best
And deliver them for me?
For you see, today is mothers' day
And I can't visit mom
For it wasn't very long ago
The angels came and took her home.
So, if there are roses in your garden
On the shores of Jubilee
Would you pick a dozen of your best
And deliver them for me?
Would you take them to my mother
And tell her that I love her.
Tell her that I miss her
In oh! So many ways
But I have joy in knowing
We'll meet again someday
And we'll pick roses together
On the shores of Jubilee..
You can read Garrison’s full article here.
Until the next line,
A.W. Bauman
Andrew is a poet, faith-based life coach, and member of the Keller Writers
Association in Keller, TX.
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