White envelope addressed to your mother in red ink — your
    hand; my journal reread after five years: I hope
              she doesn‘t die; a Wanda Landowska
          record pulled from a dusty shelf—I play her
playing as you did, Bach over and over, when I was
    a child; young composer, jazz singer mother ten years
              dead, stands with me in a cellar, smokes,
waits for laundry: "Just before she died," he says, "my mother
    said, if you become a musician, I want you to
              stand someday on a stage, sing this." He turns
          his back, sings, When there are gray clouds, I don’t mind
the gray clouds, I’m all for you sonny bay, all for you. Mom,
    I miss you and he tells me it doesn’t go away.
              Mom, last winter in this room I cried
in a man’s arms, my willingness to love stretching to
    reach someone alive: It was as if I could see my
              heart below me, dark, a mountain range watched
          from a cruising jet. I was crying and I saw death
move out of me, swiftly, like the massed shadows of clouds,
    black, seen from the sky on a clear day, recede, leaving
              just sunlight. Mom: your music, her hands, the
keys moving, live, forceful, speaking — the harpsichord — prelude,
    fugue, prelude — past death. Mom, after five years I believe
              and can’t believe you died. Last night, the wind,
          a window opening: "Mom," I shout, half-joke,
"Mom!" remembering the strong strange wind in the huge maples
    the night they called to say you’d gone into a coma.
              Tomorrow you’re fifty-five. Mom, I’m
thirty-two, and the you that lives on in me sometimes
    is not enough. Mom, I wear my hair pulled back with combs.
              Mom, I keep my room neat, exercise. Mom,
          I ride a horse once a week and keep seeing
you take Grandma’s bay mare through that course of jumps: Over and
    over: I am a child, the horse throws you. In that dusk
              I begin to learn what it might be
to lose you, but always you walk back, stride back, embarrassed,
    glasses broken, wet from your fall in the evening
              grass, no gray in your black hair. Mom, when I
          visited your grave in the snow and could not
move from the hillside because in the cold I saw your mouth
    pinken to its living color and smile at me, Mom,
              was that real? I sit in this room,
orange curtains billowing in the light — flowers, basket,
    star stitched through the Amish quilt — magenta, green, blue — your
              colors, and the dead woman plays as if
          alive, moving her long hands, making a deep
sinewy river of each delicate baroque line: Mom,
    I am thirty-two. The you that lives on in me is
              sometimes not enough. You died before
your mother. You can’t know what it is not to have one. There’s
    snow on the ground here as there was in Massachusetts
              the day they buried Grandma. Months after
          you died, she told this dream: a place with snow, she
thinks Canada. You are dead but alive, and she rocks you,
    rocks you, and you forgive her. Mom, does she rock you now
              or do you rock her? At the funeral
the priest said, our sister enters the gates of paradise
    in a company of angels. Mom, were you waiting?
              I have no mother, your mother’s gone, and
          the you that lives on, me, I must learn she is
enough. From this room I see snow. Snow. Tomorrow is your
    birthday. This is for you. The snow is melting. I’ve built
              a fire. Mom, the fingers of the dead
woman play as if in some paradise, paradise, and
    your mouth pinkens to breathing red and smiles. I am here,
          your daughter, wanting. When there are gray
clouds, I don’t mind the gray clouds. I’m all for you. All from you