Mother Love

Betsy Joseph

June 30, 2024

This rainy Mother’s Day morning

I read of an orca mom

who carried her recently dead calf

over a thousand ocean miles.

For seventeen days her black-on-white body

persevered in cold, deep waters

because she was not ready to let go.

Not ready.  Not able.

No matter the species, no matter the times,

most mothers share a primal resistance

to a severed connection with their young,

be they living or not.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems which have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.