Mother's Death Surreal; She Vanished, Poem by Rosanna Warren

Mediterranean by Rosanna Warren —when she disappeared on the path ahead of me I leaned against a twisted oak, all I saw was evening light where               she had been: gold dust light, where a moment before and thirty-eight years before that my substantial mother strode before me in straw hat, bathing suit,               and loose flapping shirt, every summer afternoon, her knapsack light across her back, her step, in sandals, firm on the stony path as we returned from the beach and I mulled small rebellions and observed the dwarfish cork trees with their pocky bark, the wind-wrestled oaks with arms akimbo, while shafts of sea-light stabbed down between the trunks. There was something I wanted to say, at the age of twelve, some question she hadn't answered, and yesterday, so clearly seeing her pace before me it rose again to the tip of my tongue, and the mystery was not that she walked there, ten years after her death, but that she vanished, and let twilight take her place— "Mediterranean" by Rosanna Warren, from Ghost in a Red Hat. © Norton, 2011.