what radiance i’ve possessed in your eyes has naturally dimmed after these 30years; and so has yours — in mine, these last five, if i am being truthful, which you know me to be, guttingly
once the solar star, now, a mere lighthouse on the other’s shore,
do you still wonder what you are?
you, my sonlight, are still golden, burning hot and bright,
but these blue lenses of ours,
and these blue talks of ours,
reveal we are animal, elemental,
sometimes too human, and fragile.
only, you fail to acknowledge another possibility, another cosmic continuum.
from Chicago, annoyed, yet exhilarated while i was full of held tears, a mother, trying to mother a boy, on his bold edge of two decades of life
2014 was a rough half year to June
we lost our first person to fetanyl but he would not be [y]our last
i witnessed your grandmother’s January bitter coldness for the second time and i still have a lasting bone chill from it
by the time you drive across the Mississippi River, you have forgiven me but i, you — even before you drove out of our alley, we keep forgiving one another, me and you.
a couple of weeks later,
i am with our first, sweet dog in our Sun-filled back yard, as he is given a gentle, good death / we have shared so many firsts, but this,
i/we do without you; 17 years — ours, for sixteen — this loyal and strong dog that you chose on Mother’s Day weekend on LaSalle Street
how can it ever be a home again without you, without him
the author and her son in the Great Room of the Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, June 2004
a lucky reservation for one night of lodging and a late dinner — made by telephone months earlier, but just barely early enough,
choosing sweaters to wear to dinner as the June Sun finally sets / you and i match in black cotton ramie, always and still, my favorite
hungrily watching the clock, in the Great Room, nestled in the same chair by the colossal fireplace
we’d been camping the previous night, in a thunderstorm and downpour at Bridge Bay, where we awoke to a bison’s grunting, and their immense shadow upon our tent; we shared our griddled french toast breakfast and percolated coffee with a couple in a VW camper, who were no doubt younger than you are today in June, 2024
with our “Wildlife of Yellowstone” booklet, we identify an osprey perched above our heads in a pine tree as we pack up our camp — a first, for each of us
mudpots, fumaroles, bison herds, bison “jams”, pelicans, waterfalls, canyons, elk, towering basalt columns, sulfur, a wild river, geysers, marmots, hot springs — and Morning Glory Pool.
so many firsts, for me and you.
your shining, smiling face[s] around that table by candlelight
what a gift, what a day, what a dream to share this exquisite meal with you, two, in such a truly wild place
is this real life?
the clink of silverware voices and laughter centered — and from every direction,
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 