Mother

You were gone before my mind could grasp the brush which paints faces on memory's canvas. Vaguely, flashes of an open grave on a sunny winter's day - bare feet on my fourth birthday - and pitiful looks from unfamiliar faces. But I remember lonely childhood days when I would visit your grave bringing flowers picked from sandy fields - And other times I would just come and cry when it seemed I was the only child in the whole wide world without a mother. Poverty sent you to an early grave and was my childhood's constant shadow. Of all your children I was the lonesome one, always seeking solace in solitude, always wandering in lonely paths, an exile from embracing arms and motherly healing kisses. Through the years I tried to reconstruct you through siblings' tales of your mothering, Although heredity ensures that part of you will live in me and will continue in my off-spring I felt I needed more than scientific fact to find meaning in my sense of being. Death has stripped me of you but death has no power over love. I am a fruit of your love, and as long as I am able to approach someone in love, I am connected to you. You are long gone. I am still your son.