My Mother is Forgetting | Cindy Veach

And why no stars tonight?
Every crumb swept clean
no finding her way back
to that
home she left
this morning.

Or was it last evening
she lost her way
and knelt at the door
without keys—

let me in.

And now a cloud sea comes
and covers up
the life she’s built

until memories evaporate
every moment a new moon.
This is when I turn

weary of the journey
and look up and up
past her eyes, past her long
fingers of light

I am about to lose.

————
Cindy Veach’s poems have appeared most recently in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Chiron and The Human Journal. She was a finalist for the Ann Stanford Prize, and the recipient of honorable mentions in the Ratner-Ferber-Poet Lore Prize and Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. She serves as a volunteer for Mass Poetry (masspoetry.org) and lives in Manchester, MA.