Arms of love

As her life slipped away,
An empty darkness filled my heart.
Tears flowed;
But her spirit and soul were still in the air,
And also in her mother's arms.

Those arms in which she had been cradled
So many times.
Those arms that surrounded her
In her final few hours of life.
Those were the arms that
Were never to hold her again.

Those arms were the ones
That wrapped themselves
So insecurely, so uncertainly around my body.
Those are loving arms;
Those are the arms of a mother who loved and cared.