Mother’s Day, 101 Years

She fumbles with the phone,

puts it on speaker, turns up

the volume, asks how I am.

I wish her Happy Mother’s Day,

ask what she is doing,

which restaurants,

which theater. I tell her how

I have always admired

her zest for life, her interest

in everyone, the details

of their lives. She says that

sounds like a Hallmark card.

Only in the past few years could

she be a splash of vinegar.

That helps her live a long life.

Steven Luria Ablon, poet and adult and child psychoanalyst, teaches child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and publishes widely in academic journals. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines such as The Brooklyn Review, Ploughshares, and The Princeton Arts Review. He has published five full collections of poetry including Tornado Weather (Mellen Poetry Press, 1993), Flying Over Tasmania (The Fithian Press, 1997), Blue Damsels (Peter E Randall Publisher, 2005), Night Call (Plain View Press, 2011), and, most recently, Dinner in the Garden (Columbia, South Carolina, 2018).