Kate Hanson Foster
Vessel
Mothering, like surrender,
is something you do very well—
like the way oar tongue and water
understand each other. You’ve locked
your wrists to young bodies and the weight
of to-do lists. Hasty needs finger you
like branches brushing against a bird.
Downstairs there is a hurt only you can fix
belly-weeping its way up—a fist knocking
on the watching wall you hide behind.
Move aside the stock threads of that empty dress—
the strands of streets you will never travel.
Go, you say. Go back into the water.
About the writer:
Kate Hanson Foster’s first book of poems, Mid Drift, was published by Loom Press and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Center for the Book Award in 2011. Her work has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, Salamander, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She was recently awarded the NEA Parent Fellowship through the Vermont Studio Center. She lives and writes in Groton, Massachusetts.
Image: Still Life with Crow by Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944). Watercolor on paper. 55 x 37 cm. 1936. Public domain.
