Before she died, her mind was oblivious.
She missed all the sorrow.
God is good. I’ll join that God tomorrow.
When had she failed to recognize me?
Never. I was her first child. Yet, now, at this hour,
I wept, and knew neglectful oblivion’s power
and its light, in which a calendar lasts for an hour.
Why reduce life to minutes? Because life was long
and here in the light and darkness I saw the light and darkness were wrong?
The family was patient. We felt the inflammation of the song.
I sensed the family’s patience. I heard the family sigh.
My mother and I discussed the calendar, strangely.
I let my mother believe the Christmas party, which in futility, she planned,
was going to happen. What else in all of life, can we understand?
The winter isn’t cold. A cool winter, and I’m under the covers, and glad
a son was left poetry to mourn his mom and dad.
Take them. They were not mine.
When she taught me to write, she said, “First you make a line.”