Children

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand. - Sylvia Plath, Morning Song

Children,
I can’t imagine
not being your mother.
Who else could
be, with your eyes like mine
and your curly heads of hair.
The three of you, parents now
in your own right,
mirroring your children
as they mirror you
and you me
with your smiles
and idiosyncracies,
community involvement.
Not that you don’t
suggest
your father too,
but I don’t think of other sides
of you (as much as I should).
I think of me
and you with me
the single parent years
of roaming the house
with absences
we tried
to fill.

-Esther Altshul Helfgott