Meeting My Mother Poem by Dónall Dempsey

Here, I meet
my mother

before she has
even thought of me.

Here, she
a turning
twenty something or other

& I only
the long longed for

the sly shy twinkle
in her eye.

And now I am
her little boy

playing with photographs
scattered across sunshine
linoleum.

Here now, I
a twenty something or other

& here
I am

older

than she
was then

meeting my mother
in the spilt photographs

that scatter time
across this Autumn floor.