When my father was four months dead & I called out, ‘Mum, 

Mum’, into night’s closed amphitheatre like a loon, a curlew, 

a wounded cub, my heart caught in the jaws of a hunter’s trap:

I’d hear her bedsprings creak as she rose, like a chest bursting

back into life again. ‘Mum, can I have a drink?’ was the mantra 

I mewled for months, projecting my voice through our house 

like a soft curse, too scared to rise myself & traverse the dark

to the kitchen sink. She always came regardless of the time, 

putting her own grief aside like a watch on a bedside table.

The glass held out in front of her; the procession of a tiny

mirror that reflected my quaking desire. It was her first 

Mothers’ Day without her husband, but still she rose when 

I begged her to, living & dying in chorus like a supernova. 

That kind of love not going anywhere but the present.