A secret hung in the air.
The party had begun.
Faces screaming saccharine
forced out the impossible celebration.

Her inexpressible groan called still,
silent amidst the shuffle of denial.
A great elephant sits quietly,
surrounded by edgy smiles
and consolation.

Oh, mother,
womb scratched and sucked dry,
eyes staring straight,
steely cement looks deep beyond
the night into a dead future.

The swollen pieces of your face throb,
coated in salt and the creaking of a rope
cuts deep into your dreams.
A baby cries, hung from the eaves,
just barely fledged, and now he leaves.

Twenty-seven Christmases
spit at your feet,
so few really seen and felt,
confident that the next ten
would make the circle complete.
Today his calves dangled
at your chin, spinning.

A constant fan now clucks around you,
mother no more.
Other children do still walk the walls
and shores of you, but it is gone.
The life that once shone in your eyes
moves away with the beast
back to the unwalkable Serengeti.

Sonja Broderick

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/untimely-death/