Poets’ Corner: Feela for Mother’s Day!

09 May Poets’ Corner: Feela for Mother’s Day!

In 1907, Philadelphian Ana Jarvis began a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day. She persuaded her mother’s church in Grafton, W.V. to celebrate Mother’s Day on the second anniversary of her mother’s death, the second Sunday of May.

After establishing Mother’s Day in Philadelphia, Jarvis and her supporters wrote to ministers, businessman, and politicians around the U.S. promoting the idea of a national Mother’s Day. They were successful, and by 1911 Mother’s Day was celebrated in almost every state.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national holiday.

Some countries, including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Turkey, also celebrate Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May. But other countries of the world celebrate their own Mother’s Day at different times throughout the year. In the U.K., “Mothering Sunday” is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Traditionally on Mothering Sunday, servants were encouraged to spend the day with their mothers, taking a special “mothering cake” as a tribute.

Flowers. Chocolate. Things in big boxes. Things in small boxes (even better). Instead, Telluride Inside… and Out offers a simple tribute in the form of a poem by regular contributor David Feela. His words in turn tribute a mom wise enough to not to scold a boy who needed no scolding. Just a warm place to land on a cold day so he could figure things out on his own.

Lost, Then Found

David Feela

Meaning waits near the center of things,
even in the trees that wrap themselves
each year in another ring of history.

I have an idea of what it means to be lost,
to settle for confusion and make
a new world out of the trouble.

At five I walked home from the first day
of kindergarten instead of waiting for the bus.
When I showed up at the backdoor

with my finger painted flower
my mother’s eyes glittered like isinglass,
holding back an enormous heat.

She asked me why I did not wait
as I was told. What she read from my face,
I don’t know. My expression

must have startled her into silence
because she took me in her arms
and never asked again.

After that I rode the bus
as if no other way would get me home.
Each day the neighborhood jerked past

in a flash of stops and starts
until winter frost obscured the glass.
With one hand pressed against the cold,

I watched my five thin fingers
melt a hole just big enough to see.
An empty street. Of course, it had to be.