for Nancy Perkins - my mother (1925-2016)
                                      
I’m so impossible close to you now
I see you everywhere, especially in the sky
where even the smallest clouds keep morphing
into you: your eyes, your hair, your arms,
your smile. How light your step across the Earth,
even as your breath began to catch
and you’d call out to me: “Wait up!
You always walk too fast.”
You carried me in your heart from the day
I was born, and also before, so now I know
that you’re in everything I see, touch
and smell, which is some consolation,
I guess, though not enough, because I want
to curse the clouds for moving the way
they do like you. I want you to know
I have too many words to tell your stone
how much I loved you. How much
I depend on only these few lines to keep me
from going on and on. How much I want
to stop on the garden path and wait for you.