Arthur

            Arthur

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            I.

When the Mom I never had

Lay dying, I drove non-stop,

Alone, on coffee,

Power naps at rest stops,

And little white pills a long-haul

Trucker in Denver gave me.

Drove Seattle to Madison, Indiana,

To spend a week with this woman,

Institutionalized when I was four.

She never got well, never came home.

Over the years she wrote letters

I dreaded to read. I never knew

What version of my Mom I’d find

In the envelope.

            II.

The woman lying in the narrow bed

Was a shriveled up little thing.

I could have wrapped her

In my arms and held her

On my lap.

            III.

Nights, I stayed in the motel

with Aunt JoAnne, I very proper woman.

In the morning, while dressing,

She told me she had cut out

The crotches of her girdle

To let her snatch hang out

Where it was cooler.

            IV.

I spent hours in my Mom’s room.

Just sitting. When she woke, we talked.

We said the words that mattered,

Without voice, mind to mind.

JoAnne tried to fill the silence.

Mom said to her, Why can’t you

Talk to me like Sonnie?

I didn’t try to explain.

            V.

In the room across the hall,

Surrounded by kin,

A silent man lay dying. His wife,

In that slow southern drawl

Of hill-country Indiana,

Complained of her own pains.

Ah don’t right-ly know, she said,

Hit might be the Arthur-i-tis.

            VI.

When nothing seems to work

And my life is a muddle puddle,

When faced with the impossible,

I sometimes think,

Hit might be the Arthur-i-tis.

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