“There was a man who had two sons . . “  Luke 15:11

Her not being there was in everything.
It was in their dinners together and
in their sitting alone.  It was in each of their
bed times and in their getting up again. 

The younger boy was rudderless;
the older one angry, always angry, and
the widowed husband, forever trying to
make it up to them for her being gone.

One day the younger one took off, but not before
asking his father for everything his mother
was not there to give him.  His father,
a first century Lear, foolishly gave in.

The money was gone in a month.
Riotous giving leads to riotous living.
The boy nearly became as absent as his mother
with nothing left to him but her memory,

He took the only job a foreigner could get
in that land  –  feeding pigs.
One day his mother came to him in a dream. 
She said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to die.

It just happened. Go home. Your being gone
makes your father miss me all the more.”
The boy said, “If I go home, will you go with me?”
“No,” she said.  “But your father will see my face

in yours when you arrive.”  The boy went home
and his father was beside himself, as joyous
as if he were welcoming his wife back from oblivion. 
He was so happy he invited the neighbors for dinner;

even killed a fat calf, but not everyone was elated.
“Don’t you see, he was dead,” the father said to
his begrudging elder son, “and now he’s alive
again? He was lost and now he’s found."

“No, I don’t see,” said the boy. “You’re not thinking,
old man.  You’ve been off your nut since the day
mom died.” “You may be right,” said his father,
“but don’t you find anger to be a poor mistress,

starving herself and all who find her alluring? 
Your mother was a holy banquet. I didn’t
know how much of her still filled this house
until your brother went away.

It took seeing you, sitting
out here in the dark, for me
to realize just how much
of her was still unutterably gone.