Recognizing Her

[In the kitchen]

I live through the small details, the eccentricities
Of the beautiful: the shadows fingering my mother’s hand

As she lifts a pickle jar into the evening light,
While she is still alive and I am alive to see it.
Light renews itself on her skin, resumes. Its old arguments with grief, the air falls away

To become space. A new world revolves here,
Around her hands as they shape the jar,

Each breath becomes a new god to believe in.
I am lost in the white roses of skin which open

On each of her knuckles, I am held hostage
By the death-defying patience of the smallest things.

[At the Supermarket]

My mother is testing the ripeness of a plum.
She is fifty-one and lovely, raising the plum

Toward the light, squinting into it like a face
She almost recognizes but cannot remember.

She is holding the plum close to her mouth now
As if to redeem it, to give it another body

Break its slow circles into hers. A large white
SALE! sign hovers over her shoulder

Like a cardboard angel which will never
Descend, never bring the good news.

The plum’s swollen purple shines,
A twin to the inmost shadow of her mouth,

Silence ripening into a word. It is
As perfect and rotund as the darkness

Hidden in her skull, that precious solitude
She carries with her everywhere—

She once said the strong must always
Taste their loneliness to remain strong.