Downward

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

On the phone my mother
is nothing but bad news

the downward spiral
of everyone her age

my aunt she says
has fallen in her yard

singular flower now
that my uncle is gone

fallen my mother says
as she was climbing

the back steps, fallen
so no one would notice

and how she got herself
up even she doesn't know

at eighty she is
unsteady on ankles

swollen like buds
after rain but here

on these steps she is
like a stem in water

the vase smooth and clear
the roots cut so clean

there is blackness forming
near the petals of her eyes.