‘if my mother cries when I tell her what I have discovered
then I hope she remembers she taught me
to follow my heart’
it’s unfortunate my mother and I couldn’t have a lucent conversation about the nature of belief or disbelief, or faith or reason or any of the things which she held so tightly to at the end…her departing, or my dealing with her departure could have been so much less sudden…
I had a recurring dream the last two years which now is much less confusing than it once was.
I’m walking through a dry rolling pasture with my mother. It reminds me of my great-aunts farm in western PA, rolling tumbling hills edged with high pine forests, buffering the sharp edges of the surrounding mountains. I’m walking my mother back to her car, which is parked at the bottom of the hill. We’re taking the trail through the field, under the tall pines, and down the steep hill.
I’ve always known the woman walking with me was my mother, but as we get farther into the woods, she begins to change and becomes much more frail and weak and small, and can’t make it down on her own. Having this dream again recently I know it’s still my mother I’m walking with.
As she starts slipping, I pick her up. I turn and begin the climb back up to the house, but she insists, we must go down, through the darkness, to the ferns at the bottom.
I start crying. I can’t let her go. And I usually wake up at this point.
If I ever gave anyone the impression that this was somehow easy, it was because I really didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about it means exploring an unfinished relationship. Everything seems so rushed. We’re rushing to close off and tidy up a past as unresolved as the future.
How do I feel holding my mothers hand as she slowly and painfully disappears? Memories…
Why have any hope?
the jay will rise or fall in
spite of our hope
Boarded peeling clapboard houses
Drainage ditches overflowing
Clods of tilled earth, sinking
The plow, which yields not
Single crop fields stretching to Iowa
Lots for sale
Piles of discarded apple trees, waiting for kerosine
Muddy livestock, spread out in open fields, miles from home
Hog barns behind a faded red bank barn, half fallen over.
The farmers hope for wealth, freedom and future quiet. But more likely, the farmers absolute ruin.
wrapping boney frail fingers
around
calloused hard leathered swollen
hands
still
he looks away.
their eyes meet, finally
holding eachother softly
tenderness
generosity
years between them.
thirty years of hatred anger scorn
transforms
melting cement tombs.
-
we’re all afraid here
what happens next?
how does it happen?
like hurricane waves crashing through
beachfront hotel lobbies
they look away
my mother came home from the hospital to die yesterday. I need this space to let some of what i’m feeling, and what i notice out, without putting it all infront of my regular followers, who are also many of my friends. my way of expressing myself, and hiding my emotions. it’s gonna be rough for me, but i feel like it’s important to keep track of my own sanity this way. thanks for understanding.
