Sestina for My Mother
On this chilly night sky I see
a constellation shaped like a glass,
and the stars are rejoicing, for the sun
has gone to sleep. The night's wind
is singing me a lullaby, like the one my mother read
to me when I was a child. I was all tangled
up in piles of blankets. They were tangled
too, the blankets I mean. The sun
was down, and my mother read
to me a lullaby, and I was drinking a glass
of warm milk by the fireplace. The wind
was actually crying, now I see,
for my mother's time was like the sun--
life is like day and night, and like tangled
spider web: people are like the wind
that comes and goes. Now I see . . .
let's enjoy while we can with a glass
of a century-year-old wine. This is what I will read
to my children. And they will read
this to their children when the sun
goes down and the night crawls in. A glass
of milk they will have, and all tangled
up in blankets like I was. I can just see
them shivering from the night's wind
that took away my mother. The wind
of the night is both good and evil. I read
it somewhere that's true, and I now see
all things must come and go like the sun,
and life has so many webs that are so tangled;
yet go separate ways like the air and water in a glass,
and life still has to go on like the air in the glass,
and so do we. True, some say life is dust in the wind
and it doesn't matter how we are all tangled,
but I say it's not true, for my mother read
to me it is not so. Like the moon and the sun,
life just goes in a circle; don't be sad. I see
a constellation shaped like a glass, and I can read,
as the wind calms and rises the sun,
the tangled meanings of the web my mother told me. Now I see.