Spring rusts on its skinny branch

and last summer's lawn

is soggy and brown.

Yesterday is just a number.

All of its winters avalanche

out of sight.
 What was, is gone.

Mother, last night I slept

in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.

Divided, you climbed into my head.

— From “The Division of Parts,’’ by Anne Sexton (1928-1974), Boston area Pulitzer Prize-winning poet