my mother

at the edge

of my bed,

her white back

humping like an orchid's

dipped neck,

her hair like willow tips,

the endmost slips of branch

against her shoulders

her pelvis,

the pliance of it

like rolls of sand

down a basin's lip

i wonder of its give,

of my two lost sisters,

of the night lost in the canyon

under a man and all his hatred

my mother, there,

myself a distant, fruitful pool

her hand against

that empty place

the breaths still shaking around inside