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…