A Friend's Mother

Another friend has lost her mother painful cancer and then broken hip to hasten the end tears stand in her eyes looking for mother eyes I have known as a child so I wipe her eyes with my fingers as mother is gone and she crumples against me giving in to grief to being an orphan to the awful alone-ness that envelopes you when both your parents are dead dead and gone I hold her there and let her cry through that mighty fear we cry together lost as children just children