When handclasps are ink

My mother took
my hand, borrowing my eyes
trusting her paining legs
to be led across the road.

That hand in mine, shrunken small,
could have been mine,
some thirty-five years ago.
Or, of my grandmothers.

So light, it felt
a butterfly had landed
or the down
from a bird’s fluttering wings.

Is this how, we know age?
In seeing time whirl
a pell-mell of sepia images
on the mind’s screen

Two generations, three women,
belonging, faith…
in the trust of a handclasp
and the desire to go home

To the togetherness of coming days?