From before it's LIGHT

flung back, like palm fronds in
rose and guava wind
to five years ago
it could have been this
same day I
walked out from Hui Nuis,
ants, a necklace around the
bed like
dark stones
sun burns thru blue haze,
my mother shriveling. I was sure,
like the bamboo and camellias,
she'd flourish in the sun,
wrote her postcards each day,
imagined swooping her up
from the room half underground in Stowe
a just born, an
almost-mummy, the musk a
bluelight world
like adding water
to dried petals,
pulled back to the living,
saw us under the banyan,
nothing to scorch or chill
but like a rare cure from the
rain forests, turn her
white hair ebony again
in the pineapple wind
she'd doze and wake ravenous in