Suzanne Edison
Mother’s Day at Lake Washington
I’ve requested a family
bike ride on the closed
and rippled lake-road
where herons suspend
over faltering-fish waters.
Once vigorous
contortionists, the Madrone
trees are drooping
as they stave off
car exhaust and death.
My ten-year-old daughter,
who, at six couldn’t climb stairs,
run, tie her shoes, or ride
a tricycle over a sidewalk bump,
pedals ahead at cheetah-speed
with my husband before
she circles back, taunting,
why are you so slow—
She cruises over fallen sprays
of chartreuse flowers
that remind me of the neon chemo
I shot into her thighs weekly
and the box of syringes
I ordered in bulk.
As a heron squawks, lifting
off the lake, and my girl
recedes, hair flying beneath
her helmet, my inability
to keep up feels sweet:
we are riding the wide road down
the middle of it all
in the longitude of afternoon.
Note: the last two italicized lines are from “Field Song,” Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, by MoonPath Press was published in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Poetry can be found in: The Missouri Review, SWWIM, Solstice Literary Magazine & RockPaperPoems; Whale Road Review; Lily Poetry Review; JAMA; and elsewhere. She teaches expressive writing to caregivers through UCSF Wellness Center for Youth with Chronic Conditions and lives in Seattle.