My Mother Is Dead 1924-2022
Afterwards, when relief was still
relief and regret for words
I never said pushed grief aside,
I forgot to forget her red-raw hands
unpinning frozen shirts
clotheslined across the yard.
Her drudgery on factory floors to pay
bills beyond my father’s salary.
Her rage at dust on bottom shelves,
baseboards, and crevices
that even God couldn’t see.
The homemade dress she made me wear
when I was born for jeans.
Later, her Saturday calls
from New Jersey to Oregon:
twelve minutes, rarely more.
Her scrambling for post-stroke words
for worlds outside her nursing home:
for clouds slipping through maple trees,
for critters strolling across the lawn,
for strangers prattling on the patio.
Her questions every week–– urgent,
confused––Why am I still here?
Why don’t they want me yet?
That is, until still became want
and seconds between breaths dissolved.
Now hidden beneath the silence
of her death, grief––evasive,
unpredictable––calls for love and waits.