Poet Laura: Mother in Satin

My grandmother’s name was Virginia May. Friends called her May, but she was my Mimi. I loved her so fiercely as a small child, the month of May might as well have been named for her. One of my first memories was our making a May basket filled with flowers from her beautiful garden to cheer my mother who was at work at the local P.O.

My mother’s name was Pollyanna. She had an optimistic temperament, a good sense of humor, and was both charismatic and beautiful. At first she was happy that I was fulfilling her unrealized dream of living a writer’s life, but when my first published piece exposed a load of family secrets, she was not happy. The publisher of my second book used a photo of her on the cover, and when, at the publication party, she saw the book she fell to her knees and laughed and cried. She forgave me for the family poems and stories.

Mother in Satin

On Saturday nights, my mother

took off her blues jeans,
put on a red satin dress
with a wide circle skirt
that swished when she danced.

Or, a black brocade sheath dress
with a peplum of white lace
and rhinestone earrings
that jangled like ice cubes.

Or, to backyard parties, a pink
waffle pique with a sewn-in
brassiere and laces up the back.

In springalator high heels,
open at the toe, she twirled
across the patio onto the grass,

unwinding like a bolt of organza,
her Tabu perfume simmering
in the torchlight, she danced

past the clothesline, past the built-in
barbecue, past the ornamental
fish pond, turning
into herself for the night.

—Donna Hilbert from Deep Red, Event Horizon 1993

I also think of Jane Buel Bradley who was born on May 1, 1908 and lived just two month’s shy of her 96th birthday. Jane joined my poetry workshop late in her life after her retirement as a children’s librarian and after many creative writing classes at a local community college. She continued to write beautiful poems until a few weeks before her death. In addition to being a fine poet, Jane was a political activist—perhaps the activism was inspired by her May 1 birthday.

After Frost’s Moon Compass 

A silver eyelash in the sunset sky
draws me outside to look and dream the why
this monthly promise always stirs my soul
and keeps me hopeful that before the whole
full moon lights up the autumn’s darkest night
I shall find words to speak of my delight
in this world’s beauty and begin to face
the waning and the darkness with some grace.

—Jane Buel Bradley from World Alive, Pearl Editions, 1997

I ask my beloved what he thinks about when he thinks about the month of May. Asparagus he says. Because he has spent much time working on films in Germany, and driving between Germany and France he tells me about the asparagus festivals during May with farmers opening their homes to serve dinners starring asparagus in every imaginable combination with meat, fish, and more asparagus. Apparently, he is not alone.

Sacramento O No

An asparagus eating contest—
I thought I’d misheard

—Liz Waldner (click to read the rest of this delightful poem)

Poems about asparagus are hard to find. Perhaps you might write one!

For me May is about family. I married in May and began my second life as wife and mother.

Gravity

What binds me to this earth
are the hands of my children,
as I hold my mother
holding her mother
back to the mother
who begat us all.
This is gravity.
This is why we call the earth Mother,
why all rising is a miracle.

—Donna Hilbert, first published in Deep Red, and is now in the second edition of Gravity: New & Selected Poems, Moon Tide Press, 2025

Your Turn

What is May for you? The flowering of spring in bud and blossom and bountiful blessings? Pollical activism? All manner of mothering?

Post and post images by Donna Hilbert. Featured image by A_Peach, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Poems used with permission.

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Donna Hilbert

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Verse Daily, Vox Populi, Tweetspeak Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac, and anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love is For All of Us. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California. (Author photo credit Nathaniel Gutman.)

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