My Mother
       

My mother was always faraway in thought:
she wasn't ever where I was. She would go back
to another time, in the old Florentine house
with the high windows.
From there the little girl
watched the sky—she remembered it
azure, light. That pastel color
remained in her heart,
along with another image from that time
—hers, not mine—of an advertisement for Nestle.
The year was about 1903.
A montage: she is sobbing
because she doesn't have the chocolate
that the other—the lucky little girl—
is eating, smearing it all over her face.

The advertisement was a bad sign!
Though she no longer shed tears, she had the fate
of not being where she wished to be,
of not having what she craved
except for the sky painted in her mind,
azure, light, and always sky.

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Copyright © 2017 Jeanne Foster & Alan Williamson All rights reserved
from The Living Theatre
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission