Do you make your awkward way through water?
Does pity choke on the dagger of your splay-fingered stroke?
Does wet wool cling to your valleys and shadows?
Or have they set you to clearing stones?
Do the stones return again and again on the winds?
Do clouds lick your feet?
Did they fit wings to the birthmarks on your shoulders?
Is there a true north to pierce your heart?
Or is it all a silent darkness?
In that place do sleeping facts lie?
Mother—my clock winds down without you.
Wow! Elizabeth keeps coming up with surprises. This one seems to have emerged from some place beyond her usual bests. So mysterious and evocative, and that wham of Mother at the end. Brava!
So particular yet so perfectly expressive of the universal (I think) desire we have to query our beloved dead. And then the final reminder that when, in our decline, we most need her, Mother is really out of reach.