pammy

pammy, so verbally
pale, yet
soaked with the wisdom
of mothers,
saw her boy sent

has life been good to you?
has life been kind?
has God of others
been God to you?

or did all the heavens
burn up
and her angels fled
the day he was flung
in the night
and left crying?

we are stolen
in our time
from embraces
and from calamities
and we leave our loves
and our lovers
longing

we're all spun
within the same lottery
the same sobering
flip of the wheel
and we are flung
and the ball drops

something turned on you
didn't it?
something from the
clouds
precipitated and the
souls of happiness
they all fled
you

only you can make
the soaking twilight
of your son's fate
rise again on the
horizon
but just on those days
when others aren't looking

and all that meandering
between magic
and mayhem was
the only thing that
kept you hinged
because there's something
good in the moments
before dawn

how do i reach
the woman whose
loss split the
canyons of
love and drowned
the valleys of
her spirit?

i hold a child
in my arms and
fear her departure
is nigh
and i rage for
your loss as much
for my own

but i see you pammy
in a moonlight
lull, looking
out a window on
a staving wood
and i wonder:
how did you shine on?

how did those days
become nights?
how did that ambush
not carom against
your droning dusk
and make you a pale
shell?

i've said and i
say: a woman
whose womb has
spilled out and
with it the shape of
her fear and her
jubilation

is a woman
ascended
and a woman
reached
and a woman
giving
source

i see my mother
and mother's
mother
and i am
held
fast

women like
pammy who've
let loves pass
and became
perched on
the arms
of living

because they
saw beyond
and above and
found no quarrel
with their
God after
all