Wateree Swamp

I remember how we left Mama on a bedspread
at the edge of this swamp, nine months pregnant,
with leftovers and a gun–to protect her from bears,
Daddy said, though “bears” could have meant anything.

And she would have shot the gun too, at a bear or a man,
if anybody who didn’t belong tried something foolish
while her husband and other children were in the water,
gliding in a flat-bottom boat through a swamp,
fabricating another childhood memory.

I remember lots of other things too, all our stories,
and I keep them close to me like that gun Mama held,
ready to pull them out when I need them the most
to protect me from the idea that one day, some day,
nobody will know we left Mama on the beach towel
at the edge of a swamp, nine months pregnant,
while her entire family disappeared into black water.

**

Hauling Water

Audrey, who outlives her mother by forty years,
plants a fig tree in her yard next to a grape
she harvests in the fall, alongside birds
that fly above her shoulders and fuss at her cats.
Widowed, watching her pennies and water bill,
Audrey recycles bath water pail by pail
as the fig tree emerges leaf by leaf.

Audrey remembers her mother standing at a well
in a dehydrated town in low country South Carolina.
She remembers her mother planting a yard with peas
and collecting rainwater in a pickle barrel.
But when she shampoos her hair in the kitchen,
she remembers her mother’s hands on her head,
and watches the soapy water go down the drain.

**

At the S&S Cafeteria

The woman at the next table
wants her mother to use her right hand.
“Use your right hand, Mother,” she instructs,
shifting the fork from one side to the other
while green peas spill into rice like punctuation marks.
Mother, seated in a wheelchair, does as she is told,
moving food to mouth without uttering a word.

At my table, my mother eats her turnip greens
and comments on the macaroni and cheese.
She says the same thing about her food each time.
Soon she will ask for a bag for her pecan pie
so she can take it out and eat it later.

What I do at times like these is eat my slice of sweet potato pie.
It’s sweet as memories spilling from Mama’s mouth,
stories that get mixed up between bites of greens
and cheese that could be cooked a little longer.
I listen to every word my mother says
and watch her watch the woman spilling peas.

**

Before the Roller Coaster Ride

When the purple verbena
nestled in the jelly jar
starts to wiggle its toes,
I have to smile.
This footless flower
is what I have come to expect.
Like the pans that disappear
from all the kitchen cabinets
only to jump out later like clowns.
Or the cat treats that are not candy,
but could be when my mother tastes them–
the bitter taste in her mouth
as sweet as a marshmallow peep or broccoli.

My mother has not lost her mind.
Memories of life now spotted with age
have fused with the sound of the ocean
and children waving through the waves.
Her house is a carnival with magic shows
and funhouse mirrors
where it is best to laugh.
Why not?

If a mind can hang on to what matters,
flowers can grow toes
and Little Debbie Hostess cakes
can taste just like making sense.

**

Slop

How can I mop up after my own mother in the produce section of the grocery store when she has an accident and calls out “Boy!” It’s easier to hide behind a shelf of watermelons than it is to apologize to that man for this woman who is no longer in her right mind. Should I explain that she calls me Charles? That her husband is often her father? And sometimes not anything makes much sense. Perhaps I could pretend my name is Boyd and her teeth are looser than usual today. “Okay, Mama, I’m here, Boyd’s here, right here!” I could yell, so he could hear, but I don’t look like Boyd. I look more like Felicia or, I must say, Miss Felicia. I look like my mother’s daughter, my own superior airs worn like a shabby sweater bought once upon a time in just the right shop. And even she would look at me as if I were crazy if I decided to change my name in the produce section. Suddenly I would be the one condemned as delusional, locked up in the mind of a child taught all the wrong words in a whole other century–another country, my own. There’s nothing to do but watch him slide and fall on a word that is lying there like the blood of his ancestors on some linoleum he was supposed to be mopping up. Or maybe he thinks she was excited to see the tomatoes. Maybe it’s normal to yell out “Boy!” when they’re so red. “She always grows Better Boy,” I could say, nodding at them. “Those Better Boy bushes always yield the very best crop.” Just like these tomatoes here, I could say, buying five pounds to make up for my mother’s word that is still lying there, slop on the linoleum floor between that black man and me.

**

When Is Summer?

When is summer?
Before you know it,
summer will be here
wagging its tail behind it.
Colorful green ideas will sleep
in the front yard,
where all winter brown leaves
drape themselves
across the roots of flowers.
Yes, it’s true!
The flowers will bloom too,
red and pink and yellow.
When is red?
Red is when months bloom
caterpillars crawling across the pots
and colorful red ideas play like kittens.
You will see the spider-like flower.
It will not bite you.
It is safe to touch.
When is summer?
Don’t worry, it will come
the day after tomorrow
but before today.
Remember the time the butterfly bush
grew taller than the house?
Its colorful yellow blossoms dance
to your summerless winter
even as we speak.

**

Sleeping With Apples

I’m worried about the bag,
and if she’ll wake up with it around her head–
red apples scattered across the white sheets
of her new bed in a new home with locks,
as if apples are they only thing that might escape–
but no, if she hasn’t killed herself yet,
she’s not going to do it with a bag of apples
so I let her keep it there under the sheet
next to her purse and false teeth.

Queen Pu-Abi went to sleep with apples too,
something nobody will ever forget.
Her tomb filled with agate and gold,
her body wrapped in beads and cotton,
would she need apples when she awoke?
Her jewelry and all her cats?

My mother, who wants to keep the apples,
has given me her diamond ring,
and her fifteen-year-old cat, which won’t survive her.
No need to make more room in the tomb.
Everything Audrey needs is right beside her:

four apples she will never eat,
the teeth she glues in her mouth on good days, and
a glass that magnifies everything she doesn’t understand.

**

Saturday Morning

Today I waved at Maggie with her sign
on the corner of Main and Cummings.
“Who’s that?” my mother asked
as we drove by. And I said, “Maggie.”
I said, “Maggie is picketing for peace.”

And my mother said, “That’s nice.”
Or something like that, waving too,
my sweet and senile mother
who danced with soldiers in 1944
and bought a beach towel in 1968
that said Draft Beer Not Boys
perhaps because it was on sale,
perhaps because she had three boys.

One of the last things my mother told me,
when she could tell me things,
was what she thought of this war.

And so I waved at Maggie with her sign
on the corner of Main and Cummings
because she knows how to stand there
and stand there and stand there
with the patience of a child
and the simple optimism of mothers.

**

Marvelous

You don’t forget some things:
Not the taste of a fresh tomato

cut into small pieces on your plate
and fed to you bit by bit, on a fork,

until you open your mouth wider
and speak a word that makes sense.

“Marvelous,” you say, smiling,
coy with the memory of tomatoes.

As much as you have forgotten,
you don’t forget some things:

Not how to share a bite of your past
pulled from a fork and held out,

a crumb passing from bird to bird
or from one mother to her daughter.

**

Cemetery with Mountain View

My mother won’t be buried here,
not in this cemetery,
but every time we drive by she stares–
the brittle old tombstones
like an adult Lego set
spread out over a grassy knoll.

I think she knows what the dead know.
I think she knows the mountains
just over the horizon from this cemetery
are really the final resting place,
something all old souls ascend
to reach for that strip of blue sky
just overhead, close enough to touch
if you’re light enough to rise with fog
like a ghost or a prayer.

Marble tablets in the cemetery
are for the living, something for us to play with
while we’re waiting.

**

I Remember Biscuits

This is how it begins,
the long decline to a time
when a sweet potato becomes a novelty
and bread crusts make a woman marvel
at the cleverness of bread.

Before milk turns to water,
or Brussels sprouts to something inedible,
biscuits can make as much sense as newsprint.
Cooking up a pan is like opening your eyes
or shutting the kitchen door at night
and locking it before bed
and going to sleep in an old cotton gown.

There are some things a person can do
with her eyes closed, like pray or measure flour
or wait twelve minutes for biscuits to rise
in a hot oven.

And then she can’t.
She just can’t remember some things,
not where to write a row of numbers
or what to wear to bed
or how to put together four–no five–things:
flour, salt, baking powder, shortening,
and milk.

It goes from there, it goes.

A person can live without biscuits.
Years can pass without numbers that figure
or sweet potato soufflé.
But I wish I myself could go back in time
to a day my mother remembered biscuits
and write everything down.

**

The Lost Language of Dragons

i

I thought she’d like the blue color
of the little winged dragon I found,
but she frowned, confused, unable
to speak the language of dragons.

ii

I thought she’d like to go for a ride,
but she forgot how to get in the car
and fell sideways, limp like her dragon
until I showed her how to sit up straight.

iii

I thought she’d like to wear dry clothes
as clean and soft as a dragon’s wings,
but she was almost impossible to change.

iv

I thought her poinsettia was thriving,
but she watered it with coffee and it died,
shriveling up on her window sill,
extinguished with the memory of dragons.

v

I thought she would always love blue,
anything blue, like her husband’s eyes,
like her favorite color, like her shoes–
the shoes she takes off only to shower–
but I was wrong about the blue dragon
with softly glimmering gold wings
living in exile on the side of a hospital bed
where this woman likes to rest, clothed,
wet or dry, day or night or afternoon.

**

Who I Am

Cora calls me Mama
and holds my hand,
explaining why–
why this or why that–
it’s hard to tell.
She may be sorry
she upset Audrey,
or she may be looking
for her favorite doll
or one of her shoes.
Cora’s voice
is like a little girl’s.
Her ponytail–
as gray as her skin–
is leathered
but soft,
like baby powder
or Cora’s voice.

**

Relative

“I miss my mother,” I tell Hattie,
shrugging guilt off my shoulders.
“You know, the way she was,
the way she used to be–
when she was healthy.”
Not that we don’t have a good time now.

And Hattie says, “She talks funny.”
As if that sums it up,
as if that’s the reason Audrey
lives in a nursing home.

It’s all relative.
Audrey talks funny,
but she can tie her shoes.
When she wants to,
she can stand up and pour a cup of coffee
and sit down and cross her legs.
She can talk for hours,
and most everybody will listen,
even when she sounds like a robin.

Audrey can touch your shoulder
when you’ve had blood work,
and gesture at the bandage
and make a sad face.
She is allowed on the front porch
where she picks off all the dead flowers
and make the others bloom.

It’s all relative.
Which is why I can share my secret
with somebody who won’t remember what I said
a day from now, but who will hold my hand

and let me miss my mother,
my beautiful mother, who waves at Hattie and me now,
this precious moment,
from the other side of the room.

**

The Opposite of Dead

Sally rhymes with immortality.
That has to mean something.
Why should Sally have to die
if her skin is already
as cool as marble?

I don’t want her to die.
I want her to live forever,
tethered to her feeding tube
as if it’s an umbilical cord
and her bed a womb–
eternally pregnant
like the belly of a goddess.

And if Sally lived forever,
I’d dust her silk tulips
and bring her more
and sing her lullabies
until I had to go and die
and leave her here
for somebody else
to love or to gape at.

When hope is attached to life support,
not even hope springs eternal.
I know I am not immortal.
I’m as mortal as sin.
Still, I can want the impossible,
immortality for Sally
and nothing else in return.

**

Sophie at Sundown

When dusk falls, she gets nervous
and follows Audrey who is called Rita
through the halls, clutching her wheelchair
as she pushes her memories to safety.
She will not sit in it, this wheelchair,
except when prompted by an aide.
It is easier for her to walk tall
so she can look over strange shoulders,
past the gray and white hair,
to find what she is looking for:

a sanctuary for the night, each night,
where she can make a palate out of straw
and lie warm against Audrey who is called Rita
until morning comes and the journey resumes.

Somewhere, out there, down the hall,
is a cabin where her father is waiting for her,
lantern held high.

**

There is No Map

First Sophie wants me to find her house,
and when we get there she tells me no,

she wants me to help her find her mother,
so we head back down the hall and look

until she tells me she needs to pee,
at which point we return to her room

where everything suddenly looks reasonable–
more like a place to lay your head for the night

than the home that Sophie will never find,
no matter how often or where we look.

But she’s okay with it once she settles down
and I leave, wondering how I’ll find her mother

in this tangled web of halls and rooms
where I never know which corner to turn to find

exactly what everybody needs me to find
(like dead mothers, cabins burnt to the ground)

or if I should just walk out the front door
and forget about helping anybody find anything

since I am just as lost myself, in my own way,
as lost as Sophie is, every night, come sundown.

**

Love is Strange

Truth is stranger than fiction,
or at least a little more clichéd
when you come right down to it
and consider how the last word
my mother ever wrote–
in a steady, schoolgirlish hand–
was LOVE, even if she did copy it
letter by letter from a note I left
on her art pad with a sappy flower
drawn like something a kid would draw
for her mother, which is what I was,
I guess, a kid drawing for her mother,
shaping each petal into a balloon
in some off-kilter crayoned color
as if I was not over fifty
and my mother almost ninety.
The winged petals on my flower
made it look as if anything can fly.

**

A Bird in the Hand

When the cat delivers a bird,
I become almost human again
holding a tiny creature in my hand
where I can feel its heart beat
and remember how it is
to be held, too, by somebody
whose heart is as soothing
as a mother’s has to be to a child
curled on her breast, half asleep,
marking time with each thump,
each systole and each diastole–
each rhythm reaching farther back
to the mother that came before
the mother that came before.

The quickening pulse between us
as startling as blood in the bird’s beak,
it is impossible to resent the cat
that has stolen a bird from the air
and delivered it to me on the ground
where I stand, my hand opening
as the bird’s heart beats its last beat
and I remember what it means
to be so close to another body
that it is almost impossible to know
where another heart starts
and your own heart ends
until the other heart stops.
A mother’s love births all loves,
even the love that dies in your hand.

**

Brain Matters

Mine is not gray yet.
It’s still a little blond, like my hair,
hanging in my face when I forget to pull it back
and curling on my pillow at night.
It’s a good pet, this brain,
a little like the cat that curls in my arms
and thinks my hair is its mother.
Why would I want to change it?
All my life, I’ve watched it grow.
If there are streaks of silver now,
call them stretch marks–
a map of each time I’ve carried a thought
from conception to delivery.
One day, the silver will be luminescent;
my brain, little more than an idea
somebody else remembers.
In the meantime,
I want to stand in the wind
and feel my brain on my face
as I turn my head from east to west
to watch a sunset.