Retrospective
Sleeping at My Mother’s
Snowed in, I stay the night.
Yet, unable to sleep,
I get up, a hollow left
in the frozen pillow,
and walk out in the new snowfall.
So cold the wind burns my cheeks;
a black stream runs under the footbridge.
Mother, so many years—
pushing me forward with a thousand
blessings, reeling me in.
When did I let go?—
Of all things, a stand of bamboo
Rustles dryly in this night,
its penetrable darkness full of snuggling birds.
So, looking back,
I see the windows of your house—
embers flaring on a log of snow.
© The Estate of Sandford Lyne
