1
There are places
     garden
     music room
     stove
     dining room

Deathbed    her eyes are open    she doesn’t speak
    My sister and I hold up a picture of Frannie the first grandchild
    Mama do you know who this is?
    Fools! Who do you think you’re talking to?
    Oh!    she cried and turned away

My room    she says
    I’ve heard that expression
    I know how you talk
    don’t think I’m so dumb
    hot pants! that’s what you say, you girls!

Bobby and I are walking, arm in arm, across the camp field
Our mothers are behind us. We’re nine years old.
We’re wearing swimming trunks.
                                                      She says
    look    see the line of soft soft
    hair along their spines    
    like down    our little birds

One of the mothers
the mother out of whose body
I easily appeared

Once I remembered her

2
This is what I planned:
To get to the end of our life quickly

And begin again

Everyone is intact    talking
Mother and Father    Mira    Babashka
all of us eating our boiled egg
but the poplar tree on Hoe Avenue
has just been cut down and the Norway maple
is planted in Mahopac

Then
my mother gives me
a vase full of zinnias
“as straight as little Russian soldiers”

Yes 
mama
as straight as the second grade
in the P.S. 50 schoolyard
at absolute attention
under its woolen hats
of pink    orange    lavender    yellow