So You Had Your Mother's Eyes Poem by Patti Masterman

So you had your mother's eyes-
I had wondered what inky abyss
you had to have fallen through,
to acquire those half-cooled coals-
although in her, the effect was more benign,
as if gentled by age or cataracts.

It is the only definite physical fact of you
that I have now,
the last information unlocked
from the vast reservoir of ignorance
that we all seem to encounter,
surrounding one anothers histories
and beginnings.

I had forgotten part of your name
but after many searchings,
I came across the truth of those eyes
(and knew I had found a part of you, within them)
even the screen's muted glowing,
and the decades of years
couldn't extinguish those fires.

And now I am haunted by the image
of a dark-eyed, motherless child
crying with exhaustion,
in a deep underground mine
full of slowly extinguishing coals