Water comes out from under a rock
into the light, going down
to a brook there in the woods,
all day, all night, and the sound of it
is clean and clear, a clarity
that helps me to forget awhile
that my mother’s final days
are coming now, as in a dream.
Philosophy is grand until
you get to here, and then
Plotinus, Plato, Kierkegaard,
and even Schopenhauer miss
the mark, if in the end it is
to bring comfort here, where she,
who is beyond all comfort now,
holds on to a black comb
and does all she can to chew
a paltry Lorna Doone
the night nurse, coming in
to check, has given her.
She used to love the way
the water came out from under the rock,
and I tell her that it still does
there in the woods.