Repetitions for My Mother

I want my mother to live forever,
I want her to continue baking bread,
hang the washing on the line, scrub
the floors for the lawyers in our town.
I want her fingers red with cold
or white with water. I want her
out of bed every holiday at six
to stuff the turkey, I want her to cut
the brittle rhubarb into pieces, to can
the crab apples, to grind the leftover roast
for shepherd's pie. I want her to grab me
and shake me out of my boots when I come home
late from school, I want her to lick her fingers
and wipe the dirt from my face. I want her to
put her large breast into my mouth,
I want her to tell me I am pretty, I am sweet,
I am the apple of her eye. I want her to knit and knit
long scarves of wool to wrap us in like
winding sheets all winter through. I want her
to sing with her terrible voice that rose above
the voices in the choir, to sing so loud
my head is full of her. I want her to carry
her weariness like a box of gifts up those stairs
to the room where I wait. Sleep, I will croon
at the edge of her bed, sleep, for tomorrow is
a holiday. Her hands will move in dream, breaking
and breaking bread. Not pain, not sorrow or old age
will make my mother weep. But the sting of onions
she must slice at six a.m., the bird forever
thawing in the kitchen sink, naked and white,
I want so much emptiness
for her to fill.

- Lorna Crozier

From Inventing the Hawk by Lorna Crozier. Used by permission of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.