A letter from my Mom has come in the mail, which wouldn’t necessarily be noteworthy except for the fact that my mother and I do not have a relationship at this time for important and necessary reasons.
I don’t know if she’s dying or if she’s just trying extra hard to know the woman who was once her little girl.
She was too busy and distracted and screwed up the first time around and all those things may still be hindrances for her, but as we get older, we tend to be confronted with the hard truths of our past — haunted unless we deal with them: perhaps that is what is happening to my Mom; I really don’t know.
She sent me one of my poems, which i wrote in college, thirteen years ago. She says she found it while cleaning out her desk, and that I should still write. Anyway, for old time’s sake, here it is:
Vain Imaginations
The balmy breeze tousles my hair
I mistake it for my lover’s fingers
I look… And he is not hereWicked wind why do you tease me
Tugging, swinging
On my garments
Whispering pleasurably into my ear
Are you hovering incognito
With my lover wrapped in your invisible cloakOh vast wind, your methods are incorrigible
I plead with you
Release me from these false visions of grandeur
For my lover is not really hereYes, the tangency is sensational,
Sonya Clifton, 1992
Yet, In opening my eyes
Your guile is made manifest
You have invoked upon my being
Only vain imaginations
… a trip down memory lane