I   
Reducing the pain
by telling her spouse a lie
to save the children;
what even honest Mothers can do.

II
Bending to hand-pluck crumbs
from the carpet while listening
to Channel 3 tell of the 7.2 collapse
of the Cypress Structure route
her husband takes home.

III
“I told you not to play with
those red-headed kids across the street!
Family of six in a one-bedroom house –
How disgusting THAT is!”

IV
Taking the wheel from Mother
to drive them on home
from catching father.

V
The elderwoman plucks feathers from her lips,
those web-thin hairs from her aging head,
flight feathers long past lost and forgiven,
strands once so thick and coppery red,
now see-through as her translucent skin.

VI
This beautiful, terrible, sublime and variegated,
striated, blended, fractured, liberated, confiscated
life she has lived, multiple stories both shape-shifting
and mind-bending but no more or less important. 

12/19/2023 ~~ by djl