MY MOTHER BRINGS ME GIFTS Day by day she gives me snatches of conversations held in waves of sound for ever, the words remembered, and day by day she dredges up the jokes passed on with years of telling, the script secure, she's happy when I laugh, and everyday presents me, from the drift of all forgotten, with pictures of her father lighting candle after candle and her mother, pouring water from a glass carafe. She leaves me day by day these gifts, precious salvage of a life lost in a sea of forgetfulness. -- Christine BROE, "Extended Wings 4, An Anthology of Poetry and Prose," Rathmines Writers (Swan Press/1998)