Poetry Plus – The Way My Mother Speaks – A poem by Carol Ann Duffy

The Way My Mother Speaks by Carol Ann Duffy

Morning’s Sunlight Gleams

Morning’s sunlight gleams
Mother’s ways and words awake
Memory’s music plays

Carol Ann Duffy (1955 -), British poet whose well-known and well-liked poetry engaged such topics as gender and oppression, expressing them in familiar, conversational language that made her work accessible to a variety of readers. In 2009–19 she served as the first woman poet laureate of Great Britain.

Poem Attribution © Carol Ann Duffy, The Way My mother Speaks

Source Attribution https://engpoetry.com/g-k-chesterton/the-strange-music/

Senryū Attribution Goff James, Morning’s Sunlight Gleams

More senryū poems by Goff James

Painting Attribution © Ira Mitchell, Memories of my Mother, (Date Unstated)

Source Attribution https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Memories-of-my-Mother/155153/4674023/view

The Way My Mother Speaks by Carol Ann Duffy

I say her phrases to myself
in my head
or under the shallows of my breath,
restful shapes moving.
The day and ever. The day and ever.

The train this slow evening
goes down England
browsing for the right sky,
too blue swapped for a cool grey.
For miles I have been saying
What like is it.
The way I say things when I think.
Nothing is silent. Nothing is not silent.
What like is it.

Only tonight
I am happy and sad
like a child
who stood at the end of summer
and dipped a net
in a green, erotic pond. The day
and ever. The day and ever.
I am homesick, free, in love
with the way my mother speaks.

Bio Reference Attribution https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carol-Ann-Duffy

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