My English grandmother and my mother

Castaway

This is a poem I wrote for my mother, who is 93 and frail. She has always been resolutely closed, denying her interior life.

Your heart is how I know

you’ll live forever —

— and I am here,

to listen with the softest ear

until you whisper what you need.

You are what I once was —

— a gentle fading of the bleak

sky, where I found you gone

between the pillars of the sun.

Listen — I will find, the softness

underneath — your heart is

bruised, and mine is longing

for the future at your feet.

In empty places play

tight-furled and all of grief

together, down the empty road

a castaway, I seek.

My mother, I have come

to edges far and gone

your hands beneath me as I rise

an architect of one.