Momma

(Well.... no, not me, not yet anyway.... So, in the meantime, you're going to get a bunch of old poetry, and a photo of my momma the moment she left)

Miss you, Momma, I love you, more, I think, than you ever knew...
and despite, or more probably, because, of what you did to me.  It just doesn't matter.

Apology seeps through her cracks

of which there are many.

At 75* it gets harder to plug 

the holes.

Her protective scales

no longer serve to detract

or retract.

She sheds them everywhere.

She's mortified of course,

unaware of the secret glory

that illuminates her unlaced

nakedness.

Soon she will be the Empress

proudly modeling her new clothes.

And I shall be there to applaud!

*and I was, 16 years later,                                                              

as we watched and waited, 

a mist came out of her side 

and wafted upward 

then dispersed....

energy neither created nor destroyed, so...

.....I can't help but cry when I hear

"Drops of Jupiter" now.

Thank you, Pat Monahan,

for writing that song 

   for your own mother