Only now,
that I’ve taken over your maternal duties
meeting your cats’ diurnal needs,
do I see how much that had been exacting
from your shrinking powers and days.
What was left was devoted
to not showing how your own daily needs
were mercilessly growing, unmet.
Nurture — less material than mental, moral —
was in your nature to give.
Not to every mortal, just a select subset:
your progeny,
your progeny’s progeny,
your proteges, your pupils,
your paramours,
your pets.
I was in this elite corps from my very beginning
till nearly your end.
My last fall from grace would perhaps have counted less,
because you had given me enough to sustain countless lifetimes
— but not the loss of yours.
That exceeded even your boundless powers.
And your sense — for once, so far from fact —
of having lost me: No number of lifetimes
could ever atone for having let you leave me
with that.