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Una Visita Con Mama -- a Visit With Mama

We walk the rocky shore and you lean heavily on me,
Mother, bruising my balky arm -- muttering "Ay, Hijo!".
A few steps and, breathless, we are both exhausted.

Your once-brown eyes, gone gray, are like 
concentric rings rippling from a random stone
thrown into this polluted pond in winter. 

Cataracts cloud your lenses; they have a ruptured look --
purple, jellied -- like the eyes of a dead fish which I poke,
perversely fascinated. It is puffed and rotten.

Your eyes are puffed, too, red-rimmed,
moist with tears that brim over
though you try to blink them back.

That you love me and I you,
and that we wish to extend
our time together, is clear.

As clear as the fetid water in the pond,
as clear as my conscience when I drop you 
at the Home,  having invented a meeting,
to which I must hastily fly.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2011

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