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Dear Mom
when the word came
I wrote a poem for you.
Death was not your scene.
Somewhere you're with your
cigarettes again,
clacking away on an
old IBM,
midst great clouds of smoke,
one hand on the phone,
projects swirling around you,
happy again.
They say death brings
souls to rest,
but somewhere I know
your work goes
to press.
Your study lights flicker
across a New York sky.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They say we've got cold fusion now, a glass of water
in a room, beaming neutrons right and left.
My mom was never like that
--hot fusion all the way,
sparks and fire,
heat and passion,
laughter and tears,
a human force,
soaring into orbit
around our lives.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I weep for Ruth, Sarah's daughter,
Jerry's wife, my mother,
and I weep for you, dear friend.
While you slept on, the planet slowed,
and through an ozone hole or two,
a spirit-force escaped --the kind that
lifts mountains, re-works
the topography of lives
--and went spinning into
far-off space.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5:30 am
No more calls so early in the morn,
no more calls telling me
my mother's dead,
(the calls she always taught
me to dread),
no more foggy voices pushing back
the heavy curtains of sleep,
the startled "oohs" and "ahs",
the ice water dripping in
warm, cozy veins.
O, no more calls in the early morning time.
May 2, 1989