Crestfallen

when I was young I thought doctors had all the answers
the inalienable truth found in the figures of mathematics
or the authorial voice of school science text books
that, in which I could depend
in the same way they would say
Mothers always knew best, in the end

but these are only of the past
not of our collective history
but of a childhood
lived universally
when the sun shone brighter and the days were longer
and the big questions only had
small answers
to sate inquisitive hunger

now I fall down in the potholes of mystery
barely keeping my head above ground
whilst the trenches and chasms that litter history
mean that truth is somewhere buried in the sand.
when I turn to my mother all I see is someone older
a façade of age where wrinkles map out years
and those lines never drawn out in knowledge,
fail to mark x in axiom’s discovery tears

I can see doubt in glinting eyes,
that maternal sparkle that never lies
but can neither tell the truth
so I sit on the steps of perception
and wait
for fading parental precepts
to pass under itching feet.