For Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share one of my favorite Stephen Dunn poems.

That Saturday Without a Car

for Ellen Dunn (1910-1969)

Five miles to my mother’s house,

a distance I’d never run.

“I think she’s dead”

my brother said, and hung up

as if with death

language should be mercifully approximate,

should keep the fact

that would forever be fact

at bay. I understood,

and as I ran wondered what words

I might say, and to whom.

I saw myself opening the door—

my brother, both of us, embarrassed

by the sudden intimacy we’d feel.

We had expected it

but we’d expected it every year

for ten: her heart was the best

and worst of her—every kindness

fought its way through damage,

her breasts disappeared

as if the heart itself, for comfort,

had sucked them in.

And I was running better

than I ever had. How different it was

from driving, the way I’d gone

to other deaths—

my body fighting it all off, my heart,

this adequate heart, getting me there.