for David Adler
1.
Blank sky far up and back,
ground emerging and a line of trees:
darkening strata out of the fog.
On the road up front, brightly dressed,
there forms assumed in a
clarity of inner light,
a child and mother move
toward us, at an eternal angle.
2.
In dreams I see my mother.
In dreams she isn’t dying,
but young, strong, busy,
hair blood and fire.
Other times, she looks worn.
As if telling me the dream,
she is silent.
When I last visited
she told my father
dreams of her own mother.
3.
Help me to understand.
In this photograph of yours,
of child and mother,
who is leading whom,
which is life, which, death,
or do both, however vaguely,
drift out of dreams to
reappear?
