In a deep drawer of my mother's desk
(once an eyesore; now an heirloom),
I found a brittle folded puzzle.
My mother had penciled in six words.
Then, sidetracked by a doorbell
or a hissing kettle or a howling me,
she'd set the puzzle in this drawer
thinking she'd get back to it
when the house was quiet again.
This morning, I fished the puzzle
from a pile of newsprint recipes.
More than forty years had passed.
I opened the puzzle gingerly
and gently added my answers.
The paper barely held together.
When my mother's puzzle was solved,
I set it back in the desk, and
with a shove of a hip, closed.