Dedicated to my mom

This is dedicated to my mom
Who taught me how to eat with a spoon
Famous lines
From the woman
Smart like a whip
Gorgeous hair waving and curling down her narrow face
Staring at her phone asking me to show her how to forward an email, again…
No problem.
Because
She taught me how to walk
How to talk
And talk the talk
How the panther growls and
How the Panthers growled.
How cold it got at Woodstock at night.
How to love music,
To hear the heartbeat of the lyrics the same way you hear the bass line and drum.
Taught me how to never lie
to her.
She taught me how to get up from a hard place,
lost self, face fear
And safely land back to myself.
She taught me how to take her with me.
How to be proud,
To recognize when people don’t fit
In the rooms you’ve built your worth to fill.
She taught me Maya Angelou and Yiddish in the same sentence
A love for every corner of the world that is me.
She taught me
How education,
Like the truth,
Will set me free.
She taught me how to spell
Righteous.
She taught me how to save lives
And to save my own.
In time she taught me motherhood,
And everyday again,
She teaches me.
Everybody can learn.
A new kind of patience,
A constant striving to get that magic she’s got behind her hazel eyes.
She’s my baby’s favorite.
Nonni.
She taught me how to trust myself
To give myself a chance
To experience
And find her.
She waits for me, and comes with me,
On every adventure,
My existence an extension of her own.
I think they call that
Legacy.
So in plain doing, with all that I do
From a poem
To a book
To a pancake flipped on the griddle pan
To a fresh brewed cup of coffee made just right
To my raising of our next generation, next legacy
I dedicate
To my mom.

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Fight Like A Mother: A Celebration of Resistance and Resilience.
A Mother’s Day Poetry Collection