Poem: Mother of Perpetual Help

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A Poem by: Glenn Currier

Mother of Perpetual Help

I feel your French porcelain fingers
in my hair soothing my sadness
with their sheer elegance.
I hear the power in your voice
insisting, “Mon cher,
vous appranez Francais.”
And frustrated with
that language of irregular verbs,
I balked and you smiled your patience into me,
my mother of perpetual help.

You were a sunrise
in the misty gloom
of those Longfellow days
painting oaks and hanging moss
and gliding the bayous with me,
Evangeline, and her lover.

You drove me to St. Martinville
and showed me Aunt Fel’s house
and reminded me of late mornings
having lemonade and café au lait
swaying with laughter
on her front porch swing.

You listened to me
as I went on in all directions at once
and told me to never be ashamed
of my feelings and creative Self.

This is the you I imagine,
not the you hiding in your room
saying the rosary and novenas
and having a mighty need for
a Mother of Perpetual Help.

Dedicated to my beautiful Cajun mother, Inez, who was and could have been the person in the first four verses. [In the Roman Catholic tradition, a novena is a series of prayers read or recited, either alone or in community, over a period of nine days.]

07/05/2003