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At Fifty

Vandal Poem of the Day: April 15, 2021

by Maggie Anderson

My mother died at fifty of

a beautiful word, leukemia.

Nine years earlier

in autumn, she gave birth to me

when the maples in the park

began to turn as they do now.

I don’t know how to walk here,

in the shifting space no meanings fill.

I have now outlived her.

I enter this foreshortened field,

wildly unmothered still.

from Dear AllFind more by Maggie Anderson at the library

Copyright © 2017 Maggie Anderson
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

Published in Maggie Anderson Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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