A Poem For All Mothers

Remembering Mother

Once again
I'm an exile in this room
where the walls are painted
with the baptismal white
of dawn's first light.
And once again
I remember you mother
who gave me first lights.

The walls I face is naked
save for the wooden frame
that has captured in monochrome
a moment of your life.
I see not the black and white
of time and space in distant past,
but the inimitable colours of love
that like a rainbow spans
the eternities between our worlds.

On the opposite wall
the whites of the room coalesce
and recede into the infinity
at the back of the mirror.
But on the surface,
the looking glass catches my image
and I see you mother in me.
The reflection tells me
you never really went away.
You could not have
for this room has no door,
and this is where your shadow
has been gathered into my dreaming,
in this chapel of the heart.

This poem, in memory of my Mother,
Khoo Siew Ching, was first published
in the New Straits Times (Poets Corner).