Mother and Son

The failing Long Island light

filters through catalpas along our driveway.

It must be May-the trees' white blossoms

do drift down around her, petal after petal

catching a glint of sun before

dying into ground-shadow. My mother,

now younger than I ever knew her,

looks toward me. I am not there

in body, but somehow as an eye

among the blossoms and heart-shaped leaves.

I have never seen such longing before.

She could fall among the dead petals here,

after her moment of light, and disappear

before I'm born. . . . I worry that thought,

and think to speak to her. What could I say,

if I could? This is up to her.

I have awakened again, with one more after-image:

my mother's decision there in that true dream

waited for all the blossom lamps to blacken.

Then, drawing her shawl tighter around her shoulders,

she walked inside to fifty years of women's work

done each day undone. What should they have known,

the husband and four sons? She would live among them

almost as a stranger. . . . Only once did one

follow her far enough to read her eyes.

He could not speak to her there

where the Long Island light still holds her,

somewhere, in that driveway, wherever that light is now.

If you die before me, try to find her.

It will be a May evening, petals .

glinting the last sun. Tell her, if you can,

that I have seen her there, and know.