Before it goes away

Holy crap, I know how pretentious and self absorbed this sounds. But I just had a poem appear full-grown in my head for the first time in years. Decades, probably - it's been so long I'd stopped noticing their absence.
I will probably spend a long time pondering what the fuck, why now. While I'm picking over cold slimy chicken bones, *really*??
I'm a little afraid this will be the only one. I've been praying for something to come, something to change, something to shake me loose...
I'm a little afraid it won't be.
It doesn't have a name yet.

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Harvesting scraps of meat
from bones boiled for stock,
saved in a bag in the freezer
from weeks of chicken dinners,
I am trying to be
as thrifty as my foremothers.
We'll have grilled cheese sandwiches
for dinner with the soup.

Cartilage from the leg bones,
soft and gelatinous,
I set aside for the cats;
the youngest one is still growing, after all.
I briefly question the wisdom of encouraging
him, and his appetite,
to increase.
But a growing boy is what he is,
and encouraged he must be,
so I slip him a little extra
to make up for my unmotherly thoughts.

A clink of bone against the bowl -
I should be more mindful, more present.
In all my years I have never made a pot of chicken soup
That didn't turn up at least one bone.
I wonder whether any of my foremothers ever did,
whether any of them ever despaired at
her growing family's
increasing appetites and,
distracted, fretting
over the thinness of the soup,
let a bone or two slip past
her seeking fingers.