Daughter, Can You Hear Me?

When I call my mother, usually it's about triglycerides,
church, sometimes scripture or prayer. Or her
neighbors, the flowers, freezes, cold air. But yesterday

she had been to her doctor and driven back by herself forty
miles. What we talked about was something urgent,
something she desperately wanted

to tell me, something she had not anyone else, not even her
husband, to tell. It was the sunset, she said, and the white
cloud she had seen -- how huge it was,

and how strange. How she watched it for thirty-some miles.
Saw all the shapes it took, the pink glow it became.
How she had never seen anything like it,

and how she had thought of little else since. How
she had dreamed of it, how she thanked God. How
she had wanted me to see, exactly, that scene.

- Adobe Anthology / Blue, Candled in January Sun