My Mother’s Hands    by Ruth Thompson

On the steering wheel my mother’s hands
clench               and unclench
clench               and unclench.

In the vast antipodes of my belly
my daughter floats.

She is a dragonfly
watching          from the mangrove roots
of my ribs.

One day she will ask

Mother, why do your hands
clench             and unclench
on the wheel?

Child                I will answer
when I fell from my mother’s womb
I was scored by her net.
                         And once when my hands
                         unclenched
I let everything
fall. 

“My Mother’s Hands” appears in Ruth Thompson’s Crazing (Saddle Road Press, 2015). Her latest book is Journey Bread: New & Collected Poems (Broadstone Books, 2024).

Ruth Thompson is a poet and a conscious channel. She is the author of six books, most recently JOURNEY BREAD (Broadstone Books, August 2024). Previous books include WHALE FALL & BLACK SAGE (poetry; 2019), and QUICKWATER ORACLES: CONVERSATIONS & MEDITATIONS (channels; 2021), which won Hoffer, Montaigne, and First Generation bookawards in 2022 and was First Runner-Up for the Hoffer Grand Prize.

Ruth began writing poetry in her fifties, after freeing herself from an abusive marriage, about which she wrote in Woman With Crows. Her poems are joyous, fierce, witty, and celebratory. Praised by Stanley Plumly, Philip Terman, Frank X. Gaspar, and others, they have won many national awards and Pushcart nominations.

Whale Fall was choreographed and performed in Hilo, Hawai’i in 2018. Here Along Cazenovia Creek was choreographed and performed by revered dancer Shizuno Nasu of Japan in 2012. Ruth also performed with cellist Lee Zimmerman in Whitefish, Montana in 2019.

A native Californian, Ruth has a BA from Stanford University and a doctorate in English from Indiana University. She has been an English professor, librarian, book editor, and college dean. She now lives in Ithaca, New York with her husband, anthropologist-writer Don Mitchell, teaches poetry and meditation, and is the publisher of Saddle Road Press. A short video of Ruth talking about her work is at www.ruththompson.net.