Ralph Semino Galan

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Ode To My Mom (For Annette Semino Galán)

Mother, who is pushing seventy,
smiles at me, cracks a joke, laughs.
She has weathered all sorts
of tragedies: my grandmother's
early widowhood and her childhood
deprivation; her college years
in an industrial city after the quiet
of her hometown's somnolence;
her early and latter career battles
with principals and superintendents;
the sudden death of her husband,
my father, after the Great Flood.

I am awed by her cheerfulness
and her resilience, though sometimes
a chink in her armor shows, a tear
running down her plump cheek
as she remembers a certain event,
with or without regrets: the death
of a family member, both near
or far; the births of her six children;
debuts and weddings; her desire
to have a host of grandchildren...
Mother smiles, cracks a joke, laughs,
while I can only gift her with this poem.

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