My Mother Who Can’t
see my face clear enough
to know me in Macy’s
until she hears my
voice wants to go
out in the trees    look
for the comet.
She sighs how she
used to be able to
jump up from a yoga
position    now has to
catch her breath. She
wants to learn to
disco    says how when
she wanted to dance
they wouldn’t let her
still she danced on bare
toes as if her feet were
in pointe shoes. The
comet she says like a
child dreaming of
marzipan    we could
go out in the trees
look up for that
brightness lashing us
with light that won’t
be here again for
200 years    as she moves
by touching the
scarred red wood
slowly up stairs she
used to take three
at a time
In My Mother’s Last Hours
Murray, she calls out
to a man she hasn’t

talked to in half a year,
I have to go to the

bathroom. Just sitting
near the bed I think

how yesterday she wanted
to help me cut up

zucchini. She seems to
look past what she

sees, shakes her head
when I say I love her.

I don’t, she says, want
to spend another winter

in Stowe, she says to
shadow, to nothing.

I don’t believe this
is happening, I jot

on a page in a spiral
notebook as if to

keep what I can’t.