The Web of Mama Dying

Threads

My daughter and I practiced two songs.
We sang them into sharp wind
blowing over her casket through the flowers.

A last scene both closes a film and opens it to memory,
the movie finally drained of time, still full of sequence.
A whole story sloshes up against the ending and spills over.

An ER nurse tells me black sheep give him
the best maps of minefields in an emergency's family.

Five kids in ours. All three sons and one daughter
married at a distance, sent news back;
the boys in flight from Baptist rigor vitas,
both girls flown to it.

We sons turned for contrast to volatile women,
cards flung on the table, fallen to the floor.

My remaining brother skips the funeral, rereads histories,
the wick of his brooding lamp pungent as kerosene.

Dreamed walking up and hugging Papa from behind, knew him
by his walk and smell, that grin. No remembered dream of Mama yet.

After Papa died Mama got the twelve years between them back,
got to hand out the sugar she'd rationed so long.

Beware, nieces, nephews, sweet child of mine, those first
romantic stances. Renegotiate your loans.