My Mother Myself

Gently lifting you
to the commode,
my mind wanders
to when yours
wasn’t knotted
with so very many
dead-end roads...

Like ring-a-ring-o-roses,
your bedsores sting me
a million times more
than they hurt you,
and as you wince,
I die a thousand deaths.

Yet, this is your life,
now, as I glance outside...
watch birds as they nest,
and remember
how you loved
to feed them,
always...

Maybe,
in another world,
a universe away,
you’d be treasured more
than in this one,

and wish,
with all my heart,
there’d be a fleeting lift of wings
into a clear, unruffled sky,

evanescent –
as the reflection
of wild geese, glinting
over broken waters

leaving me
with gentler memories
of a beauty, too deep
for these inglorious shores.