Several years before my mother died I wrote this when she gave us a scare ...
and now for my second mother.

I Do Not Often Dare

  I do not often dare imagine  
  what life will be without her;  
  without the candle of her eyes  
  I cannot imagine living.  
  But sometimes  
  when I see her resting,  
  a golden leaf upon the snow,  
  I know that every lighted thing  
  will be these eyes, and so  
  will all the stars shine on  
  beyond this room,  
  a stand of birch reflect the moon.  
   
  Mary Lowell  
  for Mother, Helen Geneva Blakey Woodall  
  † February 15, 2002