All children have cheeks and all mothers spittle to wipe them tenderly. ~ Saul Bellow in 'Herzog'

Distressed voice of a woman, over on Telephone wires, is telling you how Her joints have swollen up, or how she Now, on many mornings, finds it hard To walk.

You chide her, as gently As you can, to take vitamins, to take All this suffering in her stride, and let Time do its job of healing. Or is it Erasure?

Later while reading a novel, when you Encounter a memory of childhood: A mother wiping her son’s face, tenderly, With a handkerchief wet with her spittle, Lapses of the years past,

Come back again, to the fore. “Why was it so hard for you to Express love, in any other form But as a striving towards effacement Of lack?

And now that I have, what you, In your turn, couldn’t have, I still Suffer. And the vista is seeded with Inabilities; mine to ask for Your love,

And yours to ask of me solicitude And comforting, instead of gruffness Or this aloof distance. Perhaps this was Meant to be so, these painful welters in The chiaroscuro

Of razor edged bonds, which range Between me and the others, between Me and you, Mother.”