Casting off from Shelly Beach

 
1)
I swim thru 
my mother’s ashes 
and remember on Saturn 
Scientists have discovered  
diamonds are falling 
out of a sky dense
as cold iron.  

She drifts around me, 
squirls of ash, greyed fresh  
flesh and powdered bones. 
brain and heart burned up.  
Mind no more. 
Some of her  floats 
to the surface. 

I try to recover  
her being, gone long. 
Imagine without ire, her warmth. 
her pleasure in me. Her being 
mother, soft, exasperating, gentle. 
The gathering up, to tuck me in. 
I was always struggling to free. 

That way, she wore her hair bunned, as if 
a signature. That way, when dementing, 
she grew madder, given to sudden 
rages, or stony despair, too deep 
to reach. Her last clear words, 
still echo, contracted  
around her core. 

"I love you". 

 
2)
I didn't want to visit. 
The nursing home inevitably  
smelt like shit. I didn't want to  

shop for her underwear, 
ensure her teeth were cleaned. 
The familiar guilt, 

unbearable. 
I failed, her limp hand trailed 
fail again. Keep failing. 

It is the only 
way to 
love.