Mother love, A very touching poem

He cannot tell his mother he's dying.
Somehow he's embarrassed, ashamed of fifty-six years
of imperfections, of doing everything she told him
(even as a teenager) not to do.
He's ashamed for her, too--her second son to die this way,
that out of her milk-white and perfect bones 
came a perfect cell that would divide and divide 
her heart into a million pieces, if she only knew.
His world was every yellow tulip she breathed in April,
every strawberry whose redness she swallowed in July,
every song on her lips whose notes
slid in tenor waves through her thin skin
and lulled him off to sleep again hush little baby don't say a word.
She once felt his fingers and toes fluttering
beneath the tight skin of her belly, his straining to open his mouth
and tell her everything in the world he knew was beautiful.
Now he feels an invisible weight
pushing out on his belly and his love has no words
for all the nothing in the world 
he knows is beautiful.