An Angled View

The sun shines on us,
it's a captured landscape.
It’s a magnetic bond, her epic
lessons. How you stay alive.
That is life. This is living.
This long race is our odyssey,
it hungers for black or white.
I don’t remember the blink,
the flinch, the harrow of this
angled view.
Do I remember when she
washed my feet, or
scrubbed my knees?
No. I don’t.

But there’s serenity
in the scent of tar coal soap
and lavender pillows and
sun-dried cotton sheets.
Her dimpled chin makes me smile
as much as my child’s laugh.
My mother is the softest colour.
The shape of life. My future.
I don’t remember her stormy
moments of rain; I leave that
drear to others. Do I remember
summer’s cloudless sky,
or my mother’s hazel eyes?
Yes. I do.