Your mother
whom you hardly knew
whether she withdrew just after your birth
or died before you were two or twenty
or forty or fifty-four or even sixty or more
she gave you so much of you
but was the origin of riddles
even if you know yourself as a riddle
your fingers can’t reach out and brush
who she was, what she meant, what she held
I know there are vast rivers of sentiment
that run in the other direction
celebrating unions however imperfect,
exalting mother and child together
I can’t help that I stand for the truth
of a lonelier life, one full of destinations
we never reach whether by the sea
or in the vast unsettling interior