MY MOTHER, 56 YEARS LATER
The years fall off her, as in another poem, tougher,
and there, on the tree-lined boulevard, she walked lightly,
leaning on her stick. Mom, I said to her, I want you
running like a girl, running on the boulevard,
I want to photograph you running on the boulevard,
but she didn’t run, my mother, I photographed her weeping,
the leaves falling around her. Nothing has changed
in 56 years, she said. Sat on a bench on top of a rocky mound,
as she did many years ago, forgetting the inflammation in her gums
and the pain in her knees. With a soft, quiet face, listened to the leaves.
© 2005, Dorit Weisman
© Translation: 2006, Rachel Yakobovitch
