when Bobby died

[joel]

And as she told me of her dying son
my right eye saw her gray left eyebrow fall
and drape its threadbare curtains like a shawl
around the youthful cobalt iris underneath
its sag-drag skin; and she was one
who spoke of home – of motherhood – of all
that she had done – as if her pastor’s call
were courtesy, a call much more mundane
than waiting prayerfully for someone’s death—
and even someone’s death who’s yet her child.
And she was eighty-two when Bobby died
and, whistling through her missing teeth, her breath
was pleading for dementia’s grace: denial’d
be welcome to the fitless truth she cried.

[dadio]

an excellent poem, Joel.

[saw]

the description of the old woman's knowing eye is packed with the power necessary to carry the rest.....there is no grief like that of losing a child...