Snapshot of the Constellation called Mother

Days of three-digit temperatures break
and we can sit in the yard again, no longer

as if in a stupor. Someone mixes drinks
in glasses filled with ice. But I am still 

gone, gone in my head as if in a shroud, 
curled up like something small on the side 

of the road, knowing but not knowing 
what hit me. Some say to name a thing

outright is to make it true— And so I won't
say it plain like that. For over forty decades

I've been called mother, which is to say: for every 
stitch I've darned, there are more I've been accused 

of rending. A friend tells me: live your life. The stars,
not being alive or dead, are beyond judgment.