Another Mother's Day

Another Mother’s Day

We know only a cool moon, how she slides

(or lets the clouds, truth) come up

behind us

at the dinner table how we don’t know

(although it’s been happening

above us, yes, 

all our lives)

she’s there rising and falling like whales's
breath.  It's like the way

I’d watch your fork

come up like a pump handle and all the food

fall off;

and like the dry edges of the spigot

it filled your cheeks

with nothing

but old air--air dredged up, a silty belch

to settle the unseen but still, but still

smelt, until the rough up and down

comes to glide (primed

now) on memory

and water  (up to your lips at your sick

bed) and it’s a while before

I realize water

isn’t what pulls you away too soon for good forever,

it’s day

or night above and below going over and over

and over

like a clerk searching  on blank square

or one small wrong number someone let slip

their ruler and had you down for only 60

but it should have been

longer, right?  I don’t want

to lock you in some dumb-tongued theology

on the fifth lip of Mount Purgatory

though we’re both

on the cliff together aren’t we,

doing what we did to one another, fumbling

in the black smoke

groping too close to the edge.  (but this is

purgatory and only vertigo stops our heart)
I want you

there because I want

to think there’s redemption

for falling off

of life

that while I’m alive I have a chance still

to chose to be

kind

and my indulgence is my action

and it will lift you too,

it will,

like a great moon,

and it will illuminate you, and you will penetrate

the smoke and I will see you, we all
will see you and run to you and embrace
you and you will see us and let us