Material Expressions of Love

For years I have enjoyed indulging my mother in fine things: earrings, necklaces, scarves, rings, brooches and all sorts of clothes and shoes. She was nearly always delighted by my little finds from trips around the world and I wallowed in her delight. It also allowed me the freedom to buy beautiful things that a man cannot normally use himself.

But now my mother is not interested in virtually anything, with the possible exception of my poetry, and I feel sad; a sense of loss, of something that will never be again. And I see at once my gifts have been such a silent but strong expression of my undying love for the woman who bore me.

So, goodbye to that veiled expression of love I have known for so long but all is not lost and my poems are the bridge into my mother’s world; into that lonely, waning spirit as she too slowly says goodbye.