The world gives my mother back to me—
all the time. Dickens! cries the banner
blazoned above the library where she


first found him. Piaf turns my corner 
coffee shop into the brownstone living room
of some distant evening—serene container


of expectancies: dad, dinner. I assume
she’d pull this red dress from the rack
(where I will leave it), and bear it home


to me because I wear too much black. 
See how she colors it all: the Pastoral
Symphony, topaz rings, a glass of milk. 


The trick would be to not find the ritual 
of cocktails, white wicker on a porch, 
a blushing hill of mountain laurel


or branch of pussy willow, the church
at the shore–all kinds of things—so pregnant. When
she gave the world to me by taste and touch


(Just try it, Feel this, Look up, Listen!)
I couldn’t know that what I learned to see—
hate or love—would yield this type of heaven:


the world gives my mother back to me.


⸺
Mia Schilling Grogan is an associate professor of English at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. Her poems have most recently appeared in Commonweal, The Christian Century and Presence. Her first poetry collection is Mid-Flight Birder, published by Kelsay Books.

This article appears in November 2026.

Mia Schilling Grogan is an associate professor of English at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. Her poems have most recently appeared in Commonweal, The Christian Century and Presence. Her first poetry collection is Mid-Flight Birder, published by Kelsay Books.