Bill Brown

December 1, 2020

“My Mother’s Soul” by Bill BrownPosted by

Bill Brown

MY MOTHER’S SOUL

My mother looked like a soul
waiting to be surprised. Whether
stirring soup or weeding a garden,
she was fishing for the unexpected,
like the morning at Reelfoot Lake
when her pole bent double,
and she swung a large water snake
swimming the air like a Chinese dragon.
She wouldn’t just cut the line
and throw away a perfectly good hook,
so I pinned the snake’s head,
threaded the barb from its lip,
and released it writhing
and scarred into cypress grass.

My mother wore a slight smile
that posed a question few people
wanted asked, especially the preacher
at Bible study, my sister on the phone,
or my brother sneaking in late
on Saturday night. A soul is what
she looked like until she died,
but forever is a concept I’ll leave
to holy men on street corners
holding signs of coming doom.

Give me something concrete,
my mother might have said,
like a snake pumping a fishing line,
or an old woman sailing her death bed
toward the Rapture, her faith strong,
her face like a soul, the morphine “O”
of her mouth dark enough to swallow stars.

—from Rattle #26, Winter 2006

__________

Bill Brown: “Thirty years ago I started writing with my students to be a better teacher. Now in my fifties, I am more conscious of the fleeting nature of living. I can’t solve the great mysteries, but writing poetry helps me taste them, helps me honor a kind of humanness, what it means to live and die on the planet, this gift.”

 

This week’s guest on Rattlecast #69 is Jim Peterson! Click here to watch live …

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April 28, 2012

“The Rubber” by Bill BrownPosted by

Bill Brown

THE RUBBER

Youngest of four, aged 16,
the only child home,
I awoke one morning to pee
and found a rubber
settled in the toilet like
a bleached worm in a puddle.

Yes, I showered with my father
at scout camp, saw the wrinkled
pucker of his penis in cold water;
as a child, I spied, with interest,
my mother’s nightgown cleavage
lead just shy of hidden nipples,
but for the first time
I discovered empirical evidence
that my parents made love.

Within months my father
would die of a heart attack.
Mother knelt beside their bed
praying for his life
in loud choking gasps.
My hands were busy at his chest,
my mouth at his mouth;
or I thought that I might
palm my ears to drown
out her shameless pleas.

My parents were in their fifties.
I was the unplanned child,
a pleasant mistake my mother said.
The memory of the rubber
drifting in the basin as I peed
makes me smile at their caution,
their passion still warm
as they struggled to send
three kids to college
and raise a teenage son.
I flushed the evidence.

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

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