NaPoWriMo Day #20

I don't know about anyone else, but I have feeling drained. I am enjoying NaPoWriMo immensely and I am learning a lot, about myself, my writing, about writing in general, and about poetry specifically. But I am finding myself counting the days now. I don't want to, but I am. Maybe I will try to write a poem a week after this. :)

Today's challenge was to write about a hero. I have many heroes in my life, I am privileged to say. I have written several poems already about one particular hero -- my father, but I haven't been able to do something similar for my mother, and while she would never, ever say so, I wonder if she sometimes feels that I don't appreciate her in the same way. It's not true, but somehow it seems harder to say for some reason. Here's my attempt:

There are no words

For a while now I have wanted
to write a poem
for my mother
to honour her, to demonstrate
in some tangible way how
she has shaped me
beyond giving me her
laugh, smile and hips

But somehow the words are
reticent, unwilling as if
they won’t be enough
and they aren’t

When I attempt to describe
clichés foam forth:
bubbling laughter (like a brook)
ever willing nature (a perpetual helping hand)
constancy, stability (a rock on which to stand)
free spiritedness (as a butterfly, an eagle)
endurance (she stuck it out)
And yet, it’s all true

It’s hard knowing words
are my blood and not being
able to pour them out
for the one who gave
me life, and so here’s a
meagre offering

For my unsung hero