Forgotten

She didn’t know my name

only remembered a child-

The child she took

swimming in the brook

behind our house, her house.

She said she never lived there

When I said

“mom, you must remember me.”

 She said-

 she was no one’s mother,

 never had any babies.

Her eyes blue and blank

as if in a dream somewhere

long ago, still young and childless.

She told me of dancing

barefoot in the grass

with a young man

as if it were yesterday.

The young man,

my father fell from grace

and ran off leaving his children

to care for the wife who forgot

his name.

All the years-

erased by a savage

invader who took my mother

to far off places where years

were held by timeless days.

Like a ghost she haunts the past

leaving me lonely.

.