The Red Portrait

Last night she came to me, my mother, dead:

but as she was in the photo, that last Christmas,

wearing a red dress, and her lipstick was red

(I wonder if that means she lives in hell),

and I saw again that she was beautiful,

the same high forehead I have, the same wide brow,

and just my age, forty-nine; and now I was

talking fast, because I knew I had no time,

and I told her I loved her, I told her how her life

had informed mine, and I begged her to come

to me again, to meet my children, my wife.

I said to her—My work, see what I have made,

I have tried to do what you did not live to do.

But she smiled at me and began to fade.