Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. Tricia Whitworth is the featured poet for this episode.
Whitworth is a Midwestern Poet with a worldview. Her poems have appeared in many diverse journals online and in print. She lives, writes, despairs, and tries to hope in America. As part of the Poetry in Public Spaces movement, a cedar Poetry Box called The Fox Poetry Box is mounted on a post in her front yard in St. Charles.
This poem is all about her mother. It’s called “The Selfish Poem.”
In eternity,
my mother will pick dandelions
to set on the table
in an empty honey jar
and she will think of me.
She will always cut her sandwich
diagonally
the way she did for me.
She will sleep in a large, white
bed and wake every night,
with a start,
because she thinks
she hears me call.
In eternity,
I wish my mother no pain, no worry,
no grief,
only constant happy thoughts –
of me.
I know it’s selfish.
I know it’s childish.
But after my mother is gone,
I will go to every desolate beach
and throw a bottle
into the deep forever sea.
I will go to every hillside
and release one red balloon
into the sky.
I will go to every temple
in this world
and leave a small carved box.
All these things will hold
the same handwritten note
that will be folded
as neatly as any that
my mother always hid inside
my blue lunch box.
The note will say
wherever you are,
don’t forget me
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
