A Poem for My Mom

I don’t write much poetry.  Last week, I learned that my mother may have Alzheimer’s, and I was inspired to write this.

I felt the breath of winter
cold on my neck this afternoon.
In the mirror I saw you
who bore me,
the flowers faded now,
the leaves turned and falling,
a wondrous year
now dying to a close.
There is light in the future,
new life to replace the old,
but this year will have passed
and what springs anew
will have never known you.
How dare the cruelness of time
erase the reality I’ve known?
How can the face that defined a life
pass into forgotten mists
and leave that life behind?
We’ve loved and fought,
you and I,
but now that winter’s breath approaches
I fear to contemplate the emptiness
of spring.