I
Fixed, thus, on a yellowed wall above my eye,
This photograph of you at sixteen years
Distills a haunting pleasure as you die
A second time, or third, to seize the fears
That make Death real, most real. In life, always,
You loved this child, myself, despite the tears
I fled to save a lie—Youth’s guarded phase
To struggle best alone, or not at all,
To dream the archway down, or itch its gaze
Wherever you were not: Your touch, love, call
I did not heed, I concede, until this death
Forgives too cruel my youthful, primal fall.
II
Hear, Mother, hear, this mourning call to wrench
You back alive, once more, from death-deposing
Virtuous acts, and risk this mental trench,
Dug deep and wide against a warrior’s closing
Blow, to recast Nature’s remedy in fact—
That sound of lapping waves and gulls nosing
Down on sea breeze day and evening sinking pact.
Wildwood: My birth cottage by the sea, still strong
Forty-odd years later, while you intact
With will and cancer fate must prove how wrong
I strung your ocean stars, believing you
Would never choose our first eternal prong.
III
Wildwood! O Wildwood! Will you shift this fate
Of grief from Mother’s golden gifted air
To sand and sun and salt: Time’s healing gate
Crushing thrust, a need, a complex dare,
Required, sufficient, gauged to mortal stealth
Survival right—not tubes, not holes, not bare
Body cast to forge her giveaway health
For what exchange. Release that image stuck
To Mother’s death, for God sake, as new wealth
Divines a picture-perfect angel shucked
From mildest winter core, and grounds in deed
A silent, salted, gull-flapping future luck.
