Credo To My Mother, Dying

Hair, cloudy and curled
exaggerates your features
like a mane, too big
for your shrunken skull.

Skin hangs,
no life of its own,
waiting to retire from
covering your bones.

Still, your voice
echoes familiar
calling from mother-lips
pleading, prodding
looking to say
that final goodbye.

But not yet!
Fifty years and
I have just met you
your daughter all this time
but never separate 'til now.

Once more,
hear once more
your child's song
the impossible words
scraping at my heart:
I believe, surely I believe
that you loved me.