A Talk

We sit in the sun
the two of us.
There are no shadows,
no shade from trees.
The lawn is lush
and green, wide
and bright with white
stones in rows.
We share the view,
the peace of it. No
disagreement mars
the hour, no dark
birds fly overhead
like black omens.
She is my mother,
below the earth now,
her body,
her soul, still within
me. I taste the milk
of her, the blood of her,
the sting of her tongue,
the fragile kindness
of who she wanted to be.
Her madness made
whole by a marriage
gone bad from day one.
But now we sit
in the sun and have
the talk we never had.
The sun is warm,
the grass is green.