Mother's Day

        —for my children

I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,

that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it.

It burns there in the past, beyond my reach,
a modest lamp.

Copyright © 2011 by David Young. Reprinted from Field of Light and Shadow with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.