for my mother

It is your face

I remember, the lilt

in your voice as we turned

the pages. Your delight,

matching mine, in the adventure:

the dutiful school bus

transformed into a carpet ride

by a magic button.

This was our fairy tale

handed from mother to daughter,

not a tale of sleeping maidens

and princely kisses,

but a story of dreams,

of believing . . .

                                          There was a wind

I recall, and a momentary hush

before the magic kicked in,

and you and I would hold

our collective breath, while the bus

as if feeling our desire,

carried us to red and purple tented

bazaars, the land of the Sphinx,

jungles overhung with vines . . .

Then you closed the book,

became again the mother

who worried us into jackets,

strained chicken soup

when we were ill,

but this was your gift to me:

I had seen the magic.

And I believed.

---

Dorothy Brooks’ work has previously appeared in many literary magazines, most recently in Valley Voices, California Quarterly, Broad River Review, Tampa Review, and Atlanta Review. Her second full-length poetry collection, This Pause, Like Mist Rising, was published in May 2023, by Main Street Rag. Her fourth chapbook, Subsoil Plowing, was published in 2020 by Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Hearing Loss” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018.

web: dorothy-brooks.com