In my mother's sunroom on Kibbutz Revivim
we hear the cows and the birds.
One bird, whose name I don't know,
trills the same notes over and over
the way my mother, at 90, repeats the same comments,
same questions, same quiet awe: Once I had a good memory.
I took care of you all. Is it time for lunch?  
Do we know what's for supper? The sky is so blue.
The wind is blowing out there. And always, always,
It's important to laugh and to laugh at yourself.
She tells us again how she and my father met
in the Honor Society in Weequahic High School in Newark.
Sometimes, out of nowhere, a song pops up
from her childhood, every word remembered as she sings
Down by the Old Mill Stream,
I Love Coffee, I Love Tea,
My Country Tis of Thee.

Light pours in through the windows in the sunroom.
We fill with warmth. Pink bougainvilleas brush the windows,
a lemon tree before us, family photos on the walls and in frames
on the bookshelves: weddings, babies. My father's paintings.
In the sunroom beside my 90-year-old mother,
I feel cradled, held. This is peace, I think.
No expectations, no judgments anymore.
Just a being in the moment, in the comfort
of the same questions, the same answers.
Like meditation, says my nephew.
I probe her for tips about love and life.  
The sky is so blue, she says.  It is, it is.
I wait for her to remind me it's important to laugh.


From What Do You Mean When You Say Green? And Other Poems of Color (Kelsay Books, 2023).
Used here with permission.