Mother

On the train in my dream,
my long-dead mother window-pointed,

“Flying fish, Flying fish!”

But we were smug with being alive,
her children riding on the train,
and did not look.

How could it be that far at sea
on a train, a year, a dream?

“Turn stone! Turn home!”

But we defied her hope,
because to be a child
is to be at war

and more colors

than a dream could hold.

Even dead, we pained her
with our separateness,

and some of us were dead
with her on that train

but still. Resisted the witch
she was to return as,
to turn us.

As the train whistled into darkness
of a tunnel she whistled

me out of the dream
and out of bone shelter,

“Alone! Alone!”

because to be a mother
is to say everything

twice, disappearing.

And I woke, a child
on the far side of years

remembering a name

she traded for this one.