Cutting mom's apron strings can take a lifetime.

After my mom died I sculpted this spontaneously without preplans or forethought; I found mom hiding in the clay;

and wrote the following two poems for mom.

Mamma, mamma, don't cry,

Lucky for us, we've been born again,

From rich moist clay and strewn love

Each sand particle together mixed,

Sweet waltzes of  times gone-by,

dancing with vulnerable glass quarried limbs,

blind mocking eyes cold as stone,

mamma, mamma, don't cry,

so harried our beginnings and our end,

with so much desire and in quiet desperation,

I cut your jade wrists than mine,

My bereavement pain has not been easy,

Twice no one dies, I wait in unhope,

A slip of the hand,

And we're together again!~

Blanket of Forever

My mom and pop's words like air blown kisses,

Intractable and illuminating,

Lingering in the summer evening

Daring me to look into the light

And wish...tiny black and white

photographic jeweled stars of ruse

Along with Chunks of coal, woven into

My family's Blanket of Forever.

This is one of my favorites by William Stafford

"We'll both be looking back as far as forever,

that first day. I'll touch you - - in a new world.

Stars will move a different way. We'll both end.."