Sing in the face of death

Where (do you think)

  is my mother’s spirit?’

  she asks,

herself a mother now, 

  a dozen years past childhood, yet

  still her mother’s child. 

The jolt of loss

  tugs her back

  to half-forgotten streets

to playgrounds, sweet shops

  songs and meals

  her mother’s arms. 

The voice no longer there

  which all her life has marked

  her going out and coming in

has lullabied and soothed

  and chided, challenged,

  blessed and reassured. 

‘Where,’ she asks,

  ‘is her spirit? Is she still

  with me?’

How to explain?

How to be the voice

  that guides her in her tears

  to see the flecks and speckles that remain,

the love splashed on her life

  in myriad ways, in which

  the bone and marrow of her soul is steeped?

She will find strength,

  after the tears have cleansed

  her grief-clogged pores

to sing in the face of death,

  and as her song

  of firm enduring love

colours the desert sands

  with budding hope,

  an echo drifts across the dunes

the absent voice 

  in harmony with hers

  breathes from wells of love

whispers that not one whit

  of spirit or of love 

  is lost