Efi Hatzimanolis #53 Golden Girl

My mother’s stories of her golden girlhood
retold to us over Easter,
not only memories, but also her vivid dreams
of life before migration and motherhood.
She glows like a girl in the telling,
and I remember how the bird caught in our fireplace
brushed my cheek with its feathers as it flew out -
how could something so angular and stiff, 
be so utterly soft? 
This soft blow of feeling, 
how little my mother’s dreams must’ve counted.