quick start and buoyancy
heads without hesitation
along her usual ways -- those
trim routines she fashions
through ordinary days --
yet in an instant, game
for the unscheduled jaunt,
spur-of-the-moment spree.
she's lived her life out free,
somehow, of the bad passions
(but knows well -- forgivingly,
I've learned -- the ones in me);
free of the wants that claw
and gnaw at others so
for this and that; has no
taint of that vanity,
ambition for her sons.
those close to her can attest,
as her youngest son knows best,
whose life she dived to save
in the Rogue -- a fast river
well-named from those it drowned.