When I was young, we lived the other way ‘round,
so it seems not right that a child like I
should bid good night to my Mother,
Who would kiss me on the cheek to dispel nights’ fears,
turn out the light with a ‘good night, dear,’
when I could count on the one hand my every year
Of course she died,
the cause of that’s already known,
And she was not so much buried as sown
upon the hillside with my Grandmother,
with neighbors, friends and community elders attending,
each coupled or single with headstones of their own
Then I could not say farewell,
I pined, if asked I claimed allergic eyes were swelled,
only stopping when I could no more abide,
She won’t return to my bedside,
and that’s as much as I will tell
So on and on ‘till after thirty years
our house had long been sold,
my brothers and Dad long moved away,
And funny I called it ‘going home’ to return to a town
where I had not lived for longer than the time I had lived there,
And at our house, which I could but drive by,
comes the return of that conveniently scapegoated pollinosis
to see our old driveway full of others’ bikes and toys
with which I could not play
Yet I did recall that venerated yard of ground,
Unchanged, calling to be revisited
before the setting of the sun,
When I parked upon the hill, walked up the gravel drive
with eyes near swelling, on I strived,
When I saw - my surprise!
A fawn there, nested, curled asleep,
cradled in an unmown nest above my mothers’ plot,
her nose, covered under cloven hooves,
I stood awe-staring, daring not a move,
Then she sniffed, and flaring my silent scent
the fawn blew up in the air and with a turn
dashed over beds where other’s beloved’s’ slept,
Her hooves resounding on the turf
as would a bolting schoolgirl in two pairs of clogs,
Off to find her mother? I guess, where hallowed,
I knew not where, but I knew somewhere,
And as the white blaze of the tail of the fawn disappeared in the shadow gloam,
With her receding to Sheol,
I caught me, whispering,
‘Good night, dear’
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