On Visiting My Mother near Roundout, NY
by Ellen Factor


There is so much here.
They gave me two breakfasts
this morning.
One savoury.
One sweet.

We have so much here.
I come into town with my mother:
superstore strip malls,
tanks fed by gallons not litres.
She drives on the righthand
side of the road.
I still run around the car,
trying to drive in the passenger seat.

She has so much here,
is able to move
our old memory house
from a Sound to a River
in a double-sized U-Haul;
to sit on her new old porch
smoking additive-free cigarettes
while watching the river
flow past the lighthouse
at Roundout.

And I have so much.
A house full of furniture, my own,
in sunny-rainy Ireland;
a family here on the Hudson
to cook pumpkin pie,
to brew coffee in a coffee maker;
a nephew to call me Aunt Ellen
but it sounds like Ant,
resonates deeper
in the vocal folds of family.






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