By the Time the Night’s Forgotten

I have looked out the back door at the garden 
alive with green to decide my mother 
has not died, a change of perspective that 
makes me glad she shook off her frame for sky, 
those gnarled knuckles, the bowed femurs, stuck in 
bed like a sickly child with little to 
entertain her, who passed day after day 
alone while she waited for a parent 
to return from the needed voyage out 
into the world beyond the front door. In 
life I could not lift her burden of pain 
inside a body so disloyal as 
to betray and attack itself, the way 
souls bruised by others sabotage the best
parts of their dreams as if failure is all 
they deserve. Nor could she prevent my death 
from happening to me, the gurgle and 
the moan, all the kisses she would give to 
my cheeks and forehead lasting a moment 
and changing nothing except that I would 
feel beloved at the end. We didn’t speak 
of the rains, how they’ve drowned out some plants but
caused others to prosper, many good and 
offering the sustenance of fruit, while
others appear as invasive as the 
devil, needing just the encouragement 
of constant water to wipe out the weak, 
that old battleground she slipped away from 
with wings, that duality strung between 
points of reference different for each 
of us, the waters rising, awesome and 
mighty in the creek beds, slow and swollen 
at the river’s confluences by the time 
the night’s forgotten and the sun is high.

Sandra Kolankiewicz writes: “My poems have appeared widely, most recently in One, Otis Nebulae, Trampset, Concho River Review, London Magazine, New World Writing and Appalachian Heritage. Turning Inside Out was published by Black Lawrence.  Finishing Line has released The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition.  I hope you like these poems.  I would love for my work to appear in your pages.”