Written for a good friend who's mother has now passed on. It helped him to deal with the pain.
This poem was already published by the Park Slope Poetry Society.

My mother is an artist
She designs embroidery
- a dying art - and creates
any design she desires
her hands instruments
of a higher force

She explains to me
how this one is a fleur-de-lis
and how in the region 
where we come from
it is made differently
from someplace else

With only one eye
the other is glass
she sees more than I do
She is dying
my heart is unsteady
I am powerless
a witness to her fate

My mother’s hands create
embroidery with many 
names and meanings
She patiently explains 
the subtle meanings
behind each motif

I listened in awe
while she explained 
all of this to me
I had nothing to say

Now there is even
less to say as
Each day brings her 
closer to her end
I drown in helplessness

She tells us she is sick, not stupid
she knows her death is near
If only I could relieve her suffering
I would do so until the end

She alternates between begging for death
then apologizes for doing this
She is my mother, she worries 
about me, my mental health
how I will handle her death instead

I think about her hands flying quickly
the needle moving as tho she has 3 eyes
The pattern suddenly emerging 
Then the design is near complete
like the course of my mother’s life