Imaging My Mother

Like all boys,
I imagined her breasts,

wondered about roundness,
occasionally saw cleavage, but she

was a busty woman, in a womanly
way, and that’s just hard to hide. I say

that to foreground how far I stooped.
Death would not stoop for me,

so I stooped for it while it stopped
for her. My mother. And

above her, her mother, photographed smiling,
hand on the fence, waiting I imagine

in the freshly swept yard for her
little one—so little

now—even my finger obscura
in front of

the shameless lens almost
takes her away.