Me Little Mother
She turns me around
Forty years ago
At High School graduation
And she says…
Something I can’t remember
It was probably something like,
‘Well, lookit that!’ or
‘Boy, Howdy!’ or
Some such encouragement
And… though I cannot remember it
Now, I would not part with it
For all the treasures riding
In all the ships on the sea
Music!
She gave me music!
Wagner and Mendelssohn
Beethoven and Duke
Ella Fitzgerald and Leontyne Price
But never the other stuff
Which she called ‘that crap’…
We could laugh
When my dad got angry
He was so ridiculous
Beating the air with his fists
But when MOM got angry
The house went still
Everyone like rabbits hoping to blend in
Once I said a certain word
And she slapped me so hard
That my ears rang for three days
She wasn’t going to take
Any LIP from her children
And ESPECIALLY not THAT… WORD…
Now she is on medication
That makes her loopy
Just a month after I finished
Reading her Harry Potter
With all of the voices
And it looked as though
Her cognition was improving
But her bones are soft
And her spine
It’s a good strong spine I can tell you
Is cracked in two places
She is not a candidate for surgery
So broken it will remain
Unless it heals by itself
I believe in the power of Prayer
So a heart condition
Two strokes
And a Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Condition
And a broken back
Are not beyond healing
Human minds though respond sometimes
Only to math
And the math
They say
Only adds up one way
But I prefer art
Which my mother gave me
And which is subject
To interpretation
Maybe this
And
Maybe that
On her last day on earth
My brother says
He will ask
Do you want to talk
About your plan?
And
He says
She will say
Why on earth would I want
To do that?
I am not going anywhere…
Copyright © Andrew Fairchild | Year Posted 2019
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