(for my mother)
I’ve never quite understood
your plumbing –
what rumbling cistern feeds
your self-containment;
what tortuous whorl of drains
siphons off the blood
that must surely rise, restless,
behind your closed lids at night;
how you tame those torrents
of pounding anarchy
into ebb-tides that swim,
muddy-imaged,
in your eyes.
And it remains a mystery to me,
how you allowed a fragile bubble
of treacherous technicolor hope
to explode
into the flaming hullabaloo
of yet another life,
deciding terrifyingly
to forego
the option to despair.