Keep and Give Away: Poems

An Early Spring Morning of My Mother’s Decline

31 An Early Spring Morning of My Mother’s Decline In an ordinary hour of fish crows and pure blank sky, the breeze is a voice reminding live oaks they’re alive. Pollen sleeps in the pine boughs and I am lost in shadows, those long, phantom poles below. When I was four and the future roamed another country, I saw that same indelible sky and wanted it. Better than kinship of clouds, closer than the neighbor’s garage, I thought. From our big backyard I pointed up, up and straightened my whole body like a clothespin winging from clean sheets. I shifted my weight onto one foot, tipped to the skewed balance of childhood so my fingers could touch blue. Stretched beyond all comfort, and slightly dizzy, I was poised to learn anything— like the definition of distance, its amplitude, my sorrow. ...