My Mother Is a Saint

My mother is a saint,

I’ve never heard her swear

and the only time I ever heard

her raise her voice,

she subdues it,

but with power.

Her sound carries like

rumbles on the train tracks.

She knows surely well that her

metal tires of words were meant to haul

dire advice I’d better take.

I still knew that the moments

I dared to test it all

and step in front of that train,

I’d regret it after

falling in the ditch from the top of the freight that

was going in the right direction all along.

My mother is a saint,

the word blessed is the pendulum

on her night stand and she breathes it unto others like clockwork;

her prayers are over-written grocery lists

of how to make the world a better place

for the people around her.

My mother is a saint,

she is tasked with a doctrine of careful planning

and phrases like,

“Finish what you began… for example, the laundry.”

“Learn the way through pressing forward,”

Or “Who we are comes from something much greater

than what we imagine.”

My mother is a saint,

but she also has a name

that comes with meaning.

I sit in my caboose and hope someday

I’d live up to at least half of it.