Every mother’s nightgown has a sill and a jamb.
Has a child who touches her face and walks through.
Each nightgown dreams it’s made of glass
or is hungry for a name to hold the wind inside.
Every nightgown is the mothersmoke circling the child’s sleeping head.
(What I say floats down the hall when midnight bends.)
Each one can drift. Can catch on a branch in the grove where her wearer rests.
Can hang from a black hawthorn just outside heaven.
Every nightgown wants to be an amethyst.
To be a fox wearing nothing but its fur and the hands of the moon–
running on now past the black hawthorn.
(What I mean can’t sleep.)
Every nightgown dreams of being warm inside her wearer’s skin.
(What I called kinder than a hospital gown.)
Each mother’s last nightgown knows it should not be white.
Knows the daughter chose the wrong one.