Sitting in the early morning dark,
holding my late mother’s little chrome flashlight.
In the cylinder, the batteries shift
and roll, like two, double A,
winged monkey bombs. I write by
her light.When she had gone into her final coma,
and I was on the jet to her,
flying toward her as if I was
a locust swarm, powering my way through the
air with my laugh, my I’ll get you Dorothy,
it mattered to me beyond intensely
that I get there before she died, that I hold her
alive, knowing it would end, knowing
she was not, after all, infinite.
I don’t think my mother knew what she meant
to me, I don’t think I knew. At night, when she was elderly, she would flash me, poor
lonely soul, I would sense the slow
pink-white meteor of her unclothed body
begin to approach me from deep in her room.
I wanted to run, there was something hard to
take about it, I’d steer her and turn her,
as if I was wearing her own, old,
soft, rose-colored oven mitts
to carry something too hot to touch
to a family table. My mother flashed me.
I write by her beam. My mother shone
with will, she travelled across the small
sky above my crib singing, I sing
by her song, at dawn she is my lantern, I sing by her light.