catapult magazine

For A Little Girl's Mother I Met As a Girl

by Jennifer M. Parker

M’amie, I know you of old.
I had a hearth in you. It’s restful now to sit there once again
and bounce your babbling baby on my lap.
We were young together once and laughed, I think.
But that was long ago, before
the ravaging displacements of the calendar and map,
and the rise and sink of darks and dawns
and dunning Hours that sap the strong and weather-beat the bold.
Back then, I thought mayhap there would be answers
where my questions were by now.
But that’s the bill we’re sold. New doubts arise
where older doubts are buried, as in Rome
— a future ruin lies upon the ruins of the past.
Still, for the moment, something fine withstands
the onslaught of uncertainty and comforts me. I know beyond all doubt
that love endures, persists, expands,
and cannot be held fast. Resisting any closure,
it moves onward, upward, out. Though all my other fortunes shrink,
I know this one will last. I see it glowing in your daughter’s eyes.
That dancing light we had was so worth knowing.
And, though it fade in us, it never dies.