By Deborah DeNicola

My mother at ninety asleep on the chaise with the moving water
adjacent. We two, only residents at the pool, late Spring afternoon,
long shadows from the highrise swaddle the lounges. Dark towels
of treetops folding over brick tiles. Supple sun in the rails of the catwalk. Slatted shadow cast on the grounds. Always the dark

and the light, dark and light. The pooled water keeps moving
because the wind is up and the palms are passing it between them finger by finger, a rush of messages only a mystagogue might decipher. The swish and wash of the breeze complements the clouds rumpling toward comfort. The water goes where the wind says and the voices

of trees follow. The water moves because the wind says
something moving, what a mother might say to her daughter
calming her worries before she must sing for a crowd. I remember
my mother praying always. Now almost cheerfully waiting to die,
breath expectant each night. Like anyone, she’d prefer to pass

over in sleep. Proud mother who says outloud nonetheless,
she’s aware of her mind’s decay. Under crimped skin, aware
of a silkworm etching into her limbs, something spoken in code
by trees and shadows. Small strokes like those that skirt across water. One spark here, one brain cell’s invisible burn, memory’s

chemicals draining away. What life did. What it does to us all.
The visible skull behind her smile. The truth of my mother incarnate
at ninety in the sundowning hour, my own head deflowering
like hers. In this moment we’re two peonies weighted with sun.
How they sing in our living faces, afloat, dozing upright.