Dust

all the tender flesh what my mama loved
done gone
all that blonde curl and sweet, pink cheek,
all that good, bouncing boy who smiles and pleases
from blurred Christmas Polaroids
and reaches out with ghostly fingers
to caress scars he don't yet know

but this bone and grizzle
is lovely in its odd way
these perfect minds, fragile,
limited,
and this good blood,
and these, our tired, grey selves
pressed soul to soul

our minutes, steeped in memory,
slip ever quicker
into the warm, spangled dark that is our destiny,
into that cool and endless blue
     what mama called god