Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

With an abiding glint of love in her unfaded eyes,
Brown eyes that inhabit my dreams and memories,
My mother has dementia, a cross for us to bear
So saith her silver-tinted hair. She laboured for her family,
With her handbag gripped in her laughing lap.
She still smiles at my silly jokes and repartee
We share so many ways yet she’s the opposite of me:
Freer, grander, more baroque, a heroine of mine.
The clear-eyed protector of my younger days
My sanctuary and accomplice. A rebel with a cause.
Patient with all my mistakes. Loving her children,
The tenderest, my brother, Pete, who
She took on a seemingly endless series of buses to hospital.
For years. God bless her when she lost our Pete. I share her tears.