Today's poem is by Yvonne Zipter

Towline
       

My mother on the lawn outside Mitchell Hall,
calling me, panic edging her voice, splintering
my name as she cups her hands around its two

syllables. Surely I'd been the one, countless
other times, with alarm warping my howls,
wails of mommy careening off walls

of grocery shelves. Now here she was, lost
in the open air. And all these decades later,
her fear over our missed connection

still breaks my heart, my name breaking
like a wave, terrible and beautiful,
across her lips, in this memory of her.

The thread of that distant cry yet lashes us
together, tugboat and barge, navigating
the all-too-narrow passage of her forty-year life.

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Copyright © 2024 Yvonne Zipter All rights reserved
from The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets
Kelsay Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission