Mother, it happened only that
day, father’s death, and then you bit dust, confessed that you could not live
(without him)
I understand now that time
has passed in these eighteen years of weather-beaten sorrow, in poetry that hunts for remembrance
your face bespectacled
anointed with ashes of a frail body. You had a Masters in Mathematics, and knew so well calculations
of time breathing in soled feet
even as bodily pain did not blur the
angst of living.
My eyes vapid
are moist not with tears
but glisten with that photo
with you sitting beside father
demurring like a newlywed.
