I brought you, long ago, great sorrow—
your clever, broken girl at pains to stand up
straight, get through the years of illness—
which somehow I survived, to become a maker of poetry. But I’d claim as my best work those six years spent with you in my care—
a small return for your undaunted love.
To receive life from the sweet-hearted is a double gift. Yet mine was a childhood without questions; beset by silences. The stories I felt unable to voice have gone into my bones.
Perhaps they’ll be shared
when we are both shadows inside the earth, bones talking to bones; spirits in the trees.
