Today is my mother's birthday

 Oil on Canvas, Ocean and Sand, Roslyn Ross, 2012



Today is my mother's birthday,

the years numbering eighty-nine,
if she had lived.
I wonder, on this day, how well
we really knew each other and yet,
in the wondering, I also know,
it did not matter.
Parents and children rarely know
each other; they simply share
some time together in ways
both joyful and painful; the
ratio changing over time
and for each of us.
Both Virgos we were, and are
more alike than either of us
may have thought- and now
that is a nice thought.
The strange thing is that the
nine years since you left,
seem as long and as short
as the eighty that you lived.
Time has this way of disappearing
on us in the wake of death,
and of collapsing into itself;
as if it did not exist. Which it
doesn't, but of course
you know that now.
Happy birthday all the same.