Elegy to my mother 
  
 
…Your only eye looking upwards notices a flock  
of doves over your hospital bed   
pinching up the corner edges in a canopy   
to lift you    
  
You were in that dreamy near heavenly way   
about to be kidnapped    
by the rose-shaded cherub faces you drew    
in the 1936 grade school sketch book    
when you showed me  
childhood perfection in pages   
    
separated by clear wax sleeves where you’d pressed    
rose   violet    lilac    petals   
all your life you paint-brushed          everything pink   
fuchsia      & sky blue,   fibs that  
kept you light & fairy-like   

In Christus’s Death of a Virgin        
          the disciples surround her deathbed   
          whispering incantations as St Thomas outside  
past the high-rise window     raises his hands in disbelief  
to Gabriel’s display of the golden girdle  

When I discovered   
          (you’d shaken off the furry feathers)   
you’d run out of tales   
we pulled in opposite directions, thinking eastward     
no westward   
we tore the white sheets apart    
          but you needed 
the ripped cloth seamed      back together     

in transparent stitching    
          to braid your namesake’s ascent
          Imaculada