Aasta May

[i.m. A.M.F., 5^th May, 1927 – 14^th September, 2005]

With our shared love of words, I wish I had spent

more time valuing the long and short of it all – the

beautiful balance of a vowel in your name, saying

I could leave when perhaps I should have remained,

then living so far away it would always be down to

the language to keep us close, expressions of love

never lost yet stretched across years and miles. Reading

between the lines of that distance is another act of poise,

but there are no shortcomings then or now, and these

words will not be rhymed to be more than sound.

Not yet. Your writing was always honest and true –

poetry and letters to a son in England, an amalgam

of our roots and selfless hope for my future, showing

me how to keep it simple: always Mom, not Mum.