the roots, ripped from the earth, with veins hanging like hairs
curl, without the touch of dirt and water, from exposure to air
the red hide of bark hide whorls from burrowing black beetles

I am brushing my mother's hair with a plastic-bristled paddle brush, and
she closes her blue eyes. The very same ones that would shake in anger.

her mother, her sisters, her brothers, a red grove old
the survived burns and poverty is slowly collapsing,
under the weight of age and illness from what is new
and they stand silently and watch each other just fall
one-by-one they fall, surrounded by helpless others,
that can only watch with barren arms, little movement

She used to be, so strong
but, age makes all weak.

She had howled and screamed like a wretched tiger at young, quiet
me, who would keel over. I'd shut down at the sound of her gold car
as I shakily held red-marked papers that proved my name was mud
and I had finished nothing except a hollow swallow of deceit, found

when a tree collapses it gives a fragrance and a life to decay, then it
is the mother of life for all the creatures that need sustenance from
to every insect and fungus that feeds off it's fibrous flesh, that bores
into the bark until it is stripped clean, dissolving, into where it once
held prominence, where it once darkened growth that it fosters, now
it is gone, it has given all to plenty and needs nothing more to hold.

I wonder if that is how she is now,
she knows she is sick, succumbing
to the loss of energy that comes to
with a too-swift fall, scraggly roots

she is the mother to the decay that
feed him, feeds me, feeding us all
until, she returns her other grove.