Mother Approaches the Border
                                                                                   
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky



Mother is leaving us

slow step by slow

                        lingering step

 

She’s ascending the winter trees

                  without bud

                  without leaf

 

She looks back

                        a runaway child

                        without overcoat

 

Time is a broken necklace

She’s given up gathering

                  spilt beads

 

Yesterday

is a clanging

in the basement pipes

 

Tomorrow chugs down the track

blowing its horn        Where

                    are her sisters?

 

Who has the passports?

Must she cross

the border alone?

 

The lake’s in a bad-

weather mood

Snowflakes lick her cheeks

 

Mother laughs at the ducks

how they dive into what

                                    we can’t see

She has nowhere to go

                                    but up

tending the business of sky

 

She has nowhere to go

                                    but down

having settled

 

the questions

                                    of dust

                                    of ashes

 

She doesn’t belong to us anymore

She belongs to the naked trees

to the lake and its bad-weather mood

 

to the ducks diving into what

                                    we can’t see