ON MOTHER'S DAY

By the railway station
a runaway hops
on a train's caboose
when dusty winds
lops over the plains
the child cut loose
with hunger pains
not yet with memory
of a family name
or secrets to be regained
for his strange fate
as a man
is still to be arranged
in a murmur
for a woman
in first class
who lost her son in war
will not allow
the boy to be orphaned
but takes him as her own,
what else she says,
is a mother's day for.