Ruby Rose's "To Mama" is a letter of grief and longing addressed to a mother who is no longer within reach. The poem never says exactly why she is gone, but the speaker's pleading questions ("Will you come and find me") suggest a distance that feels final. Her heart is weak with missing her, and even the birds have gone quiet.
The speaker is full of regret and tenderness. She wishes she had kissed her mother's hands every day, and she sends her prayers out each morning "with drops of dew," as if nature could carry them. She is afraid of forgetting, so she spells out her mother's name to hold on to it. Her mother's face feels vivid and real, yet she can't touch it.
The mood is sad but gentle, and it softens toward the end. In the last stanza the mother is present in rain, in a remembered laugh, in passing pink clouds, and even in the speaker's darkest moments, when her heart is "a pile of shattered glass."