Maybe

A poem for my first mother on her birthday

Judith Shirek Ellefson (March 25, 1940 - November 23, 1975)

Maybe

Maybe she’d forgotten
	she had a daughter

Maybe
	caught in the tangle of her own life
		she’d forgotten mine

Maybe she didn’t know
	how celebrating birthdays
		brushing my hair
		touching fine embroidery
		hearing baby goats’ cries
		making Mother’s Day cards
			would turn into longing

Maybe she didn’t know
	how the longing would go on
		stretching way out past the horizon
			like train tracks 
				never arriving 
		becoming the longest sorrow
				the one with no destination

Maybe she knows now
	or maybe I do

Maybe she told me
	just the other day
		when we saw baby goats frolicking 
			at a farm up the coast

Maybe her soothing hand was whispering
	 on the back of my neck
 
Maybe her voice was saying
	 “It’s your story now”
		
Maybe she was untangling
	 my hair
		dividing it in two, then three, and three more

Maybe her hands have been working
	 deftly
		braiding a narrative

Maybe I’m remembering
	she didn’t forget

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