for my mom on her birthday

My Mother's Raincoat

was nothing but a 2-ply, black 
plastic garbage bag
with a single hole punched through
for her head.

And huddled in the McCook High School bleachers,
beside another mother
who, too, had grown into such a poncho,
she watched the Girl's District Trackmeet
below.

It was spring in Nebraska,
and the northwest wind blew in sleet from Wyoming,
pelted the garbage bags
and the cotton sweatsuits of runners
in the infield.

Beneath green sun visors
keeping drizzle from their eyes,
my mother and her friend looked on
and waved.

And standing alone 
at the start of the 440 yard run,
I fumbled to undo the string of my sweatpants.
The lucky beads I always wore around my neck
were not there, and there was nothing
but cold to hold me up.

Until I saw my mother's garbage bag
and remembered that tucked beneath it,
she kept graham crackers and Hershey bars,
chapstick and peppermints.
Underneath all that wind-whipped plastic
were hands that would rub out the cold
and drive me home.

Underneath it all--
and in spite of the sneers from other runners
who laughed long at the sight of two women in bags--
was the mother who, years later, would stand on the front terrace,
curbside, who would wave at me as I drove away
to newer homes.
The mother who would wave until
I turned the corner, and she could see me
no more.

Will she ever know the times I circled the block,
hoping that she hadn't yet gone inside,
remembering hands and cold
and that blessed slant of light 
through her visor?

Shan