[Theme music fades in]
Hi, have you taken a deep breath today? Welcome to WNUR News’s poetry segment, where you’ll hear timely poem readings to help you relax, reflect, and reconnect. Mother’s Day is around the corner, and even though it is hard to put into words everything our mothers and mother figures do for us, this next poem tries to.
[Theme music fades out]
Ada Limón was the United States poet laureate from 2022 to 2025. She was the first Latina woman to hold the title. She’s talked about her experiences with infertility and the freedom of letting go of the expectation that to be a woman is to be a mother. Her poem, “The Raincoat,” is from her 2018 book of poetry, The Carrying.
[ soft rain sound fades in]
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
[ soft rain sound fades out]
That was “The Raincoat,” by Ada Limón.
Thank you for listening to Well-Versed.
Whether your Mother’s Day is a time to celebrate, appreciate, reconnect, or remember, let your song for whoever you call mom be unfettered.
And to my own mom, my two grandmothers, and all the mother figures in my life, happy Mother’s Day. Thank you for all the times you’ve kept me dry in a storm.
Georgia Kerrigan, WNUR News.
Theme music by Soul_Serenity_Sounds | Pixabay.
Sound Effect by DRAGON-STUDIO | Pixabay.