Mother’s poem in “Cup of Tea”, a magazine
Barbara Moore Vincent - my almost 91 year-old mother – is now published in London. everyone’s cup of tea #1, a magazine edited by poet and performer, Jow Lindsay, and published by Bad Press. I recently received the publication here in San Francisco. I soon took her copy over to the family home across the Bay in Richmond. After dinner, and over the breakfast table, I first read her some prefatory dialogue with her that included her interpretations of some lines from Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and, since her eyes can no longer make out small print, I read her poem aloud:
January will open the horrible threat.
February will break off a few of the wicked.
March the winds will blow and frighten everybody.
April will break my heart.
May will come whisking through.
June is hard to decipher.
July will never stop to say hello.
August is jolly and happy for people like me.
September is hard to take.
October is full of joy for very few.
November marks the worst that could ever come.
December for many it’s love and joy
But not for me.
Previously when I had read and reminded her of the poem, she had no memory of making it, and I would have to persuade her that I was not the author. But this Friday evening, perhaps because of the presence of the magazine, she was clearly delighted to claim ownership and reflect on and interpret the situation of the making the original poem. As is our habit, she spoke, while I wrote down the following:
“I was not very happy with the way things were going.
I just think there came a point in my life
where none of the old-time dreams
ever mounted the stairs.
And I did not want them to leave those things
you depended on because you were
so fond of them. They disappeared from
every day life. There are so many wonderful
times when people take the time to talk to you
and you do not want them to leave.
But, then, that would be quite boring. You want them
to move on but, at the same time, keep on being with you.”
I read the poem a second time:
“Those (lines) are quite potent, don’t you think?
They are just kind of deep in me. I can remember I felt
I wasn’t being fair. But I would not have anything left
if I did not put down something. Don’t you think?”
She pauses:
“I just didn’t want to think anymore. I am afraid things
will be so tumbled down, or caved in, all the things
that have happened in my life. I would like very much
to let the world be happy – but the one around us
is not a happy one. It’s a tumble down, squirting life.”
And that is pretty much where we left the poem’s discussion, which I thought was pretty remarkable, particularly her clarity about loss, and a “no blink” view of her world,
one so counter to the feisty, combative political optimism and struggle that I vividly remember from my childhood. Ironically, this evening, she is in wonderful spirits and so enjoys pressing her hands down on the pages of the magazine.
