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Barbara Hamby: Ode on My Mother’s Handwriting
Her a’s are like small rolls warm from the oven, yeasty,
fragrant, one identical to the other, molded
by a master baker, serious about her craft, but comical, too,
smudge of flour on her sharp nose, laughing
with her workers, urging them to eat, eat, eat, but demanding
the most gorgeous cakes in Christendom.
Her b’s are upright as soldiers trained by harsh sergeants,
whose invective seems cruel in the bower of one’s
own country but becomes hot gruel and a wool coat
during January on the steppes outside Moscow.
Would that every infant could nestle in the warm crook
of her c’s, taste the sweet milk of her d’s, hear
the satiny coos of her nonsense whisperings, making
the three-pronged razor of her E easier to take,
the bad girl, I’m ashamed of you, disappointed, hateful,
shame, shame, shame, the blistering fury
of her f feel less like the sharpened rapier of a paid assassin,
left only with the desire to be good, to be ushered
again into the glittering palace of her good graces,
for her g’s are great and fail not, their mercy
is everlasting. The house of her h is a plain building. It has no
pediments or Palladian windows but brick walls,
sturdy and indestructible. Oh, the mighty storms that rage
cannot tear down these thick walls or alter
their sturdy heart. But her windows are small—she does not
like to look out, shuts her eyes, for the world
is cold while her fire is warm. She is a household god,
jumped up on Jesus, Jeremiah, Job, all the Old
Testament scallywags and their raving pomaded televangelist
progeny, yet her k’s know how to kick up their heels,
laugh at you and with you, whip up a Christmas Dickens
would envy, kiss your eyelids as you drift off to sleep,
though no one can know the loneliness of her l, a forlorn
obelisk in the desert, hard and bitterly cold
in the heat of the sun. Other m’s are soft and round,
but not hers—the answer to every supplication
is, “N-O spells no,” which, in a way, is comforting,
because you know where you stand,
where your please, pretty please begins, and how far those p’s
must climb before meeting her most serene
and imperial q’s—regular, rigid, redoubtable. For the dark wind
of her s’s can be like the desert simoom, hot and dry.
You could die of thirst, your throat taut as a tent pole holding up
your bones and their tatters of flesh, but for her hurricane
of words, blowing roofs off houses, lavishing water on an arid world,
unleashing slaps, hugs, prayers on the long, ungainly hours
that separate us like the spaces between her lines, the waves
of her u’s, slice of her v’s, vivisecting each moment
with the x-ray of her ecclesiastical gaze. What is her x, a kiss
or a rebuke? Both—her lips sweet as the nectar
bees suck from flowers, cruel as their sting. So why
am I still her acolyte, her disciple, her most obstreperous
slave? Because in the curve of her zed is my Zen master,
my beginning and my end. How I have felt the five
fingers of her one hand; seen her hair, once chestnut, turn white
as a seraph’s wings; heard her high, naked voice combust
with love’s bitter perfume; sat down at her Puritan
table and feasted on her wild blue eyes, like rustling
cornflowers in the dark, mutinous grass of the past.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Barbara Hamby is the author of many collections of poetry. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.
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What a luscious poem this is–BRAVA, Barbara!
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You had me at the first line – small rolls warm from the oven. What a tribute! thank you
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🤍🕉💮
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Michael, Thanks for posting this today. My mother has been dead for 15 years, but this made me remember her in all her fiery glory.
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It’s a great poem, Barbara. I admire your passion and imagination.
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This is about as powerful a love poem for a mom as will ever grace the alphabet. From a to z it’s a poem abuzz with Hamby’s images of amazement.
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It really is powerful. Happy Mother’s Day, everybody!
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Unsurprised but very grateful to see this marvel of a poem by Barbara Hamby today … it has made me eager to rummage about in my files to find something typical of my own mother’s schoolmarm hand. An elementary and middle-school teacher her entire adult life, her script was gorgeous, whether she wrote in pencil, pen, or chalk on the board. Extra thanks for this one, Vox Populi!
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Thanks, Annie!
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Getting up grinning. Great way to start the day! Thank you!
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Perfect (even if rainy) day for this love alphabet.
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This is a masterful poem indeed – and absolutely gorgeous. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
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And here’s the master word baker herself alphabetizing the joys and terrors of mother muse! Wonderful poem, Barbara. Fine choice, Michael.
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Thanks, Mary.
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Seriously beautiful poem. ()
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(Carla)
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Thanks, Carla. Yes, it is a seriously beautiful poem.
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Barbara, That’s a profound and beautiful poem.
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(Carla)
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Yes, Lola
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what a wonderful abecedarian memoir of shape and sound. It makes me realize how much I miss my parent’s signatures and penmanship in that old, much more conducive to such—Universe. Now our hands determine the world!
Lovely Barbara!
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