Ecstasy of Night

When Mother began to die, tubes suckled her blue

veins against the blue sky, and dreams pumped images

of ocean and desert and her brother’s back

whipped by alcohol’s tyrant. Soon, she would be

a platform of fear shipped beyond welted skin

and staccato sobs in the night. There comes a time

when nature heals deep memories through grace,

and forgiveness reflects an inner cast of holy

space like a monk who crafts holograms of truth

and shadowcasts of love in cavernous dwellings.

Knowing all of this, mother mined the night

to extract common jewels and children’s breath

for a fissured map of hard abuse but could

not dare spirit’s flight to rescue seventy-five

pounds of engineered flesh from pressure-wrapped zero.

There she was—zero-dead—mailed to the airy spaces

and all around we wailed as the children

smacked the ball to heaven. Mama dear, you folded

the web that even you—hand-skilled and eye-bright—

could not weave your way out of, and we blew hope

into your deaf ears to ward off the ecstasy of night.