I’ve always believed that when life gets a little (or very) challenging, it’s trying to teach me something. I lose my favorite ring? Maybe the lesson is detachment. I get stuck in a massive traffic jam? Maybe the lesson is patience, and gratitude (after all, I’m not the one in the wreck). I get diagnosed with something scary? Maybe the lesson is that living for the moment is what matters.

So it’s probably no surprise that when I read Michael’s Mark poem, “Visiting Her In Queens Is More Enlightening Than A Month In A Monastery In Tibet,” I loved it. My favorite kind of poem is one that tells a story, and I always appreciate when a poem injects humor and levity into a serious subject, all providing more depth to the meaning.

Here is Michael’s poem:

Visiting Her In Queens Is More Enlightening
Than A Month In A Monastery In Tibet

For the fourth time my mother
asks, “How many children
do you have?” I’m beginning

to believe my answer,
“Two, Mom,” is wrong. Maybe
the lesson is they are not mine,

not owned by me, and
she is teaching me about
my relationship with her.

I wash my dish and hers.
She washes them again. I ask why.
She asks why I care.

Before bed she unlocks and opens
the front door. While she sleeps,
I close and lock it. She gets up. Unlocks it.

“What I have, no one wants,” she says.
I nod. She nods.
Are we agreeing?

My shrunken guru says she was up all night
preparing a salad for my breakfast.
She serves me an onion.

I want her to make French toast
for me like she used to.
I want to tell her about my pain,

and I want her to make it go away.
I want the present to be as good as
the past she does not remember.

I toast white bread for her, butter it,
cut it in half. I eat a piece of onion.
She asks me why I’m crying.

This poem was first published in The Sun and is posted here with permission from the poet. You can learn more about Michael Mark here. The poem appears in his prize-winning poetry chapbook, Visiting Her in Queens Is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, published by Rattle.

A big thank you to Michael Mark for allowing me to share this poem.

It’s National Poetry Month, y’all! If you’re new to my blog, then you should know that every week during the month of April, I share poems I love from contemporary writers. I do this because I have been writing poetry most of my life and reading it just as long, and it’s a genre that is often misunderstood. I hope to pique your interest in poetry, if it needs to be piqued, and to show you that a really great poem can be accessible to all.

And for those of you who have been longtime blog subscribers, you know the drill. Hold on to your hats for this month-long poetry ride! See you next Saturday…

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