Lisa Mcivor

Circles 

I first knew safety curled inside my mother,
slept where I belonged
below the rhythm of her heart.
There were no perils to dependency,
our boundaries of frail bone,
mythical as the separation of our skin.
Now we find ourselves from the startle of our sleep,
the gauze thin weariness of age,
its slippered foot upon the stair, 
the hesitance of hands
translucent as a moth’s wing,
papered knuckles swollen smooth,
their eager pathway of veins.
We are children
lost within the parchment of our fingertips,
the years stretched ponderous between us
to this fierce and final understanding
of feathered breath,
the blue of fragile limbs and letting go.
These are the lines of early evening
curved to surrender,
cheekbones against her pillow willing sleep, 
the bravery of certain mornings,
a slackness of chin and the heaviness of words,
bedclothes shared with sorrow
and the softness of her hair.
So everything falls to this;
the little loss, the brittle light,
still I would tell you it is love, even these
spare, unbeautiful remains.
The shadow in the doorway remembers her.
My mother watches its slow journey across her floor
like the edging of an ocean or a cup’s silver rim.
She has told me that it sparkles, 
that as it moves closer it has called her by name.
She  spends her days listening
now to the ebbing dark eased along  her wall,
and waits for the light to reach her blanket,
to feel its gentle touch
warm against her knees.
to the periphery of her blanket
and it calls her by name.

{Lisa Mcivor, mcivor.lisa@yahoo.com}