My Mother Recalls by Ellen Austin-Li (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

My Mother Recalls
by Ellen Austin-Li

The cattails are almost gone, mother
sighs, replaced by masses of brown-tasseled

grasses, the kind overtaking the banks
of the Erie Canal that flows by my hometown.

Growing up, my mother called-out every green
plant, every tree, as if they were family:

Locust, Magnolia, Sycamore, Linden,
Rhododendron, Phlox, Katsura.

On my last visit home, I saw an old photo
of her, a young woman standing outside the farm-

house, crowded with her nine brothers & sisters, Nana
& Tom—even his children called their father by his first name.

In black & white; I couldn’t see the color
in Mom’s cheeks, but I could imagine the bloom

from the fresh country air she extolls. Farmers,
the salt of the earth, her favorite expression

about her people. She must have learned some
magic there, coaxing the lushest gardens

from our suburban soil. So often, I’ve heard her
downplay what she knows. I’m not a student

like you or your father, she’d say. Yet I remember
the Adult Ed class she took on Joyce’s Ulysses

just for fun. The daily crossword puzzles
she sunk into as if it was her religion.

I keep forgetting what those invasives are
called along the canal. Phragmites,

my 94-year-old mother reminds me.
They’re called Phragmites.

PAINTING: Cattails by Olga Khait.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The first draft of this poem was written at the beginning of the pandemic when I drove through my hometown en route to pick up my son from college as the country went into lockdown. I stopped and stayed in a motel a few miles from my childhood home, where my mother still lives, so I wouldn’t inadvertently expose her to COVID-19. My motel room overlooked some wetlands near the Erie Canal, now overrun with invasive grasses. Missing my mother then, I recalled her ready identification of this invasive species at age 94, and how she reported they are overtaking the native plants along the Erie Canal. I’ve always been impressed by my mother’s connection to nature—her deep native love of the land—which probably came from her upbringing on a dairy farm. I’m also impressed that she’s still alive with surprisingly sharp recall—now age 97! I appreciate how the poem captures my mother’s extraordinary wisdom and humility.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother (age 97!) and me, Christmas 2023 (Syracuse, New York), with Jolly, Alex, and Bhargavee (husband, son, and son’s fiancée) in the mirror.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ellen Austin-Li’s first full-length collection, Incidental Pollen—a 2023 Trio Award finalist, 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist, and runner-up to the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize—is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Finishing Line Press published her two chapbooks, Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). Her work appears in Artemis, Thimble Literary, The Maine Review, Salamander, Lily Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. She’s a Best of the Net nominee and holds an MFA in poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen co-founded the monthly reading series, Poetry Night at Sitwell’s, in Cincinnati, where she lives. Find her at ellenaustinli.me, Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter).