MY MOTHER, 56 YEARS LATER

The years fall off her, 
as in another poem, tougher, 
and there, on the tree-lined boulevard, she walked lightly, leaning 
on her stick. Mom, I said to her, I want you 
running like a girl, running on the boulevard, 
I want to photograph you running on the boulevard, 
but she didn’t run, my mother, I photographed her weeping, 
the leaves falling around her. Nothing has changed 
in 56 years, she said. Sat on a bench on top of a rocky mound, 
as she did many years ago, forgetting the inflammation in her gums 
and the pain in her knees. With a soft, quiet face, listened to the leaves. 

MY MOTHER, 56 YEARS LATER