Infinity’s Nest

‘Mama’. My first word.    
And the word wailed out after you drew your final breath.      
   
   
How easily you offered up your mama-hand, always held just far enough for me to toddle on my own      
    
until I finally could fly.      
    
Not until I became a mother myself did I discover how much of me was still nested tight      
    
into every fiber of you.      
    
How the life-cord that bound us together those first months would never fully untether      
    
even after you’d earned your ultimate wings.    
    
And, how, when my own daughter would ask me, minutes after your final flight      
    
who was going to be my mama now      
    
I thought I would never, ever have the wingspan to adequately respond.      
    
Nor, how, years later, I would see so clearly that you’d never actually left.      
    
Your wings my own. As so the warm air beneath.      
    
‘Mama’, indeed. Infinitely.      
   
   
R.