I only have a few days left,

The radio screams;

The television blares;

The spam-mail claims;

I only have a few days left,

To order flowers for Mother’s Day.

Only Mother, 

(Against all the rules of the game,

I thought I knew so well),

Mother

Is dead.

Like Father, 

And Grandfather,

And Grandmother,

And it makes me wonder:

How could all these characters

That made up the landscape of my childhood,

The very fabric and the backdrop of my life

Simply walk off stage forever?

Who wrote this script, anyway?

But that is just ego talking,

Ego that sits like a huge blind egg

Atop a pedestal of its own design.

That is just ego pretending

To be the end-all and the be-all of existence.

In reality, the fabric of life continues;

Rip, repair, rip, repair, rip, repair.

The river of life keeps flowing

Finding another channel where one is blocked.

The blood that ran through my parents

Flows through me and my grandchildren

As well as Sir Tulip Tree saluting the morning sun,

And those three awesome wild turkeys strolling beneath;

That humming, zipping dragonfly;

That laughing marigold.

This

Flower is for you, Mother

And 

This

Moment

For you and me and all the ancestors

And all the descendants

And

The Now

Of three yellow tulips:

Bulbs brought from Amsterdam

(Where you never journeyed,

Content with my stories and pictures)

This now, I enjoy for all the world,

For Mother,

For Mother’s Day.

The chaotic spiral path of earth will journey my egobody

Away some day too.

Meanwhile,

Do we not owe it to that host,

That multitude of ancestors

Stretching out behind us into the net of proto-life,

Do we not owe it to them 

To watch the golden flowers glow, 

As intently as we are able?

Certainly,

That is the attitude of my wise cousins:

Dragonfly, turkey and tree.

Should I do any less?

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Life is a Dance
The Truth Train

The Pandemic Anti-Academic

Comes the Reign