With an abiding glint of love in her faded, smiling eyes, 
brown eyes that inhabit my dreams, spark my memories,
my mother tells me she has dementia, a cross for us to bear,
or so saith her silver-tinted hair. She laboured for our family.
with her handbag gripped in her laughing lap, taking buses,
while waiting patiently, in her mac, for the number 207.
She still smiles at my silly jokes and encouraging repartee 
We share so many ways yet she's often the opposite of me:
freer, grander, with a more baroque style, a heroine of WW2.
She was the clear-eyed protector of my younger days,
my sanctuary and my accomplice. A rebel with a cause.
She laboured without complaint, got on with everyone,
always patient with all my mistakes. Loving her children, 
the tenderest, by far, my brother, Pete, who died, young.

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