by Jeanne Fuller

I stare remembering Mother.
Stare at sailboat masts,
Mostly vertical but rigid,
Docked on resting hulls
In Giocometti thinness.

Others lean--
A network of visual tension,
A restless, fretted scene.
Stress, my Mother disallowed--
But gentle touched with keen resolve.

Calm waters. Never really still
Disturb shadowed images
In witness to wetness below,
Distorts erectness to gyrate with wind
As endless, twirling dervishes.

Storms slice the silence,
Submerge the non--existent substance.
Rain sluices hulls
Till shadows sink in darkening;
But masts remain upright or bowed,
Withstand the blow,
Stark exclamation marks.

So Mother stands stable, stately,
Not unable to bend and listen.
I hear her voice as a violin bow
That loses not its straightness,
Slants to draw across the strings
Loosing sounds of heaven.

I return from convoluted memory,
Accept the mute uprightness,
Refuse the pulsing waves' illusion,
Content to lean on wisdom’s knee,
Center down to my beginning
to be who she would have me be.