Fractures

(in memory of my grandmother)

The tectonic shifts that shaped my life

Were shaped by her, by her alone.

I rose not from her, but through her son,

And yet I call her mine, mother

To the heart that still weeps, calls out

In sleep to the ghost I remember,

Etched stark by the runway lights,

Beneath the still wings of my flight,

Still, hands raised to stay my departure,

Still the fracture opening, my cry

Drowning under the dark deep grind

Of the engines firing farewell.

Her ghost now comes to me often

To heal life’s fractures and soften,

And her shape is the molten rock,

Shaped and shocked into the stratum,

Which keeps, sustains love’s momentum.