For Mom

I want to buy you a hot dog

But you are an abstraction.

Now I see that I can’t buy

Beef on a bun

For an abstraction

But I do see that

I had no way of knowing

When you were real

If real is here

And gone

Is not porous.

Each day now

Is without you

But I understand

The comings and goings

Small symbols on the avenue

We shop

We stop

We eat with vigor

We stop

We get carried away

We stop

We just wind down.

I want to buy you a hot dog

But you are not real

You are an abstraction.

You may be the body

Seen at Riverside

You may be the body

Lowered at Ararat

You may be Saks’s

Siphon, Vuitton’s vixen,

Castro’s kookaburra

Ka-da-ching, ka-da-ching.

You were the womb for us

The call to us

The dinner body