Before Before Big Mama died, before she forgot her daughter's name- my weeping cousin with eyes dark as caves, before she forgot her dearest Big Papa, forgot how to dip her hands deep into flour and lard to make her pineapple upside-down pound cake, before she forgot how kisses fierce as a cyclone's roar used to feel and before her glass angels flew off with her best lamps, sofa, four poster bed, and her Bible, Big Mama had her vision. Her seventeen year old grandson; hair fallen out from chemo, leg taken earlier by cancer, skin thin as parchment on his dying bed, tubes now draining his life more than giving; her Michael, son of my dark-eyed weeping cousin, rose from his bed, walked to her house in the night , whole again, and kissed her. He kissed her then slid through a space filled with yellow and gold sparkling lights to kiss his dark-eyed weeping mother, and they joined hands together in a circle, the kind of circle that can never be broken. Not even when bodies and minds fail. Pris Campbell ©2006 Published in OCHO  2006 Graphic: Pris Campbell Return to Poetry Index II Return to Homepage