As a strange and bittersweet sequel to yesterday's journal, one of Mom's poems from years back was just published in the Christian Science Monitor.

It's called, Genius:

January 14, 2011

Genius

A spider's web beaded with dew bridged low
from bush to bush across my path, sturdy
enough to catch my knee, complex enough
to make me glad to go around.
I waited but she never showed to calculate
the geometrics of a day's hard spin, no
breakfast gained. I figured she would mend
the break, catch something for a later lunch.
And yet the incident had shaken me; musing
about her intricate design I thought of Mozart
writing sonatinas at age six, of Michelangelo
who said: "Tell me if anything was done."
How genius works without acclaim, simply
performing what it can to get some daily bread.

– Darren Stone

I brought it to her, she burst into tears. Later, she had ripped it out, and it simply joined the pile of things in her basket that she shuffles through every day. Just underneath, on a book of her poetry that she has been dissembling, you can see where she has scribbled "How Blest I have been."

As mom sings to me most mornings, "Oh sweet mystery of life I love you dearly."