Eben E. B. Bein
What Mothers
"our heads turning
toward whatever mothers us"
~Jenny George
How like California to give too much
of a beautiful thing without effort.
An iridescent bedlam of hummingbirds
secure their airways right in this Penstemon patch
two decades and a coast away.
All the times we went looking—
it's too easy, alone, Mom. Nothing earned.
I just sit in the purple of it,
don a dizzy circlet of chirrups.
Where territories meet, I find myself
brandishing my ruby throat
whetting my tiny sword.
Yet I track you, the one with the all-red head
in the most glorious patch,
you, the glory, glory of the patch.
I know it is art because
it rickets and cheers from you,
the whole dart puffed up
and fletched out of our misery,
Mom. I wish you were in the flowers
with me again.
If you come for me, I do not know
what I would do:
flash my bib, give chase, glint away
and back, even now, turning
toward what mothers us,
I cannot turn fast enough.
Eben E. B. Bein (they/he) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate and adult administrative assistant to the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition. They were a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their first chapbook Character Flaws won Fauxmoir lit’s Spring 2023 competition and explores judgment of the self and others in romantic and sexual relationships. They write often about parent-child estrangement, healing, and love as well as relationships with the natural world, especially in urban settings and on the backdrop of climate catastrophe. They live on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with their husband and can be found online at ebenbein.com or @ebenbein.
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