and my mother, now also dead, when she was a child --
how probably at least once
she ran to him when he came home from work,
and he laughed and stooped and took her in his arms
and said, "My Lucy-girl."
This image is
the quickest route I know
to the wellspring of my grief,
the surest way to bring tears to me
and a sniffle to the zendo.
Clatskanie, OR, 2020 Jan
