Almost Sundown

I stood before you like a child who could not comprehend your pain,
your desperation, your plea for release.
Who wouldn't understand your inability to let go, to concede,
to accept the doctor's hardly indirect question that you are ready
for the netherworld, that negative space, that parallel universe
we'll never know but are destined for?

How could you? No one is prepared for that. But your eyes pleading
while your heart could not let go were convincing enough for that
indelible signature when for a split second we wondered if we were ready, knew we weren't, knew we never would be.

Goodbye dear mother. How can it be a year to the day tomorrow?
How can it be that long that we haven't spoken, haven't argued, got
pissed off about politics or the state of the world?

I am in your likeness you and then again me
and I feel one layer less, that vacancy, that minor to the major.
But I promise in the days ahead,
the weeks, months and years,
I will try to release you.

All my love.