With closed eyes, I inwardly spy on the enormously arbitrary stockpile.
Her picture drifts by, escorted by a brisk convoy of memory -
those strikingly timeworn matrices of hoary but lasting stories
from her youth, then from the wrong side of forty…
and now about the beginning of wrinkles on her rickety little fingers –
feeble and gentle.
There she is…smiling unconditionally at me, not concerned with my status or money,
or, for that matter, my other silly intimacies that keep waxing and waning like an isochronal scream.
With all her warmth and affection – unqualified and plenary
she waits at the doorway…across time…ever-ready to accept me
for whatever I was, am and may continue to become.
While I have ignorantly swerved this way and the other
erring, straying, scouring the world over, she has been invariably there -
my unabridged blessing, my true well-wisher.
My mother, any mother –
The best girl-friend ever.
For the gift we receive by default
