What To Do When Your Mother Is Gone

Walk a road.

Mystery mother, if you were here, which confusing

Road would we walk together? Memories gone,

Like always, head still smart, what age are you today?

Kicking your cracked heels high on the weed-sprung court

Or pushing that walker, gently telling me things that explode?

Sing an old tune.

You will never be dead as long as I am singing

I will never be ugly as long as you are my mother

I will never be anywhere but midcentury New Jersey

Wherever you take or send me in this world

As long as I am singing, singing you.

Touch a person.

I do, my mother. I leave my house and I walk down the road

And I find them, the soft-bodied, warm-elbowed people

Sitting in rows or swarming in rooms

And we are them, Mommy, we just have to leave the house

One more time, one more time. Come, won't they warm us?