I have tried for weeks to find the poetry in my mother’s madness.  I find it, then lose it, then find it again.  My mother spent years buying gemstones off the television, only to hold them up to the sun in her backyard and watch them sparkle.  She is not a simpleton, distracted by shine, but this intersection of light  brought her so much joy, I saw her as she must have looked as a small child.  When she handed a box full of them to me one day,I felt she was handing me what was left of her happiness. I took it.  To refuse her would have been cruel.