Generativity
After we said goodbye to Dad,
my mother seemed to shrink again.
It seemed, another inch at least had been
whittled from her pared down frame.
Of the sixty-three inches she boasted
once now fifty-eight remain.
My mother is being ground to dust
and the misery of it is plain:
her neck is locked; her back is hunched;
her joints are racked by pain.
As, notch by notch, her spine gives way,
her courage takes the strain.
Once she seemed to scrape the sky
but just fifty-eight inches remain.
My mother worries that I will shrink too.
She believes that she is to blame.
I reassure her, calm her fears:
we are similar, never the same.
Of the sixty-three inches I started with
all but half an inch remain.