By John Grey
You’re in the kitchen.
Your mother’s in a nursing home.
The phone call is all about her day.
Your day can’t get a word in.
She doesn’t remember your children,
but the names of every nurse
in the facility glides easily off her tongue,
preceded by an expletive.
Same with the other patients.
They talk about her behind her back.
They steal the best rockers on the veranda.
They’re sloppier than babies at the dinner table.
There’s no time for you to update her
on your cancer treatments, or how your kids
are doing in college, or your husband’s promotion.
Conversation was more democratic when your mother
was middle-aged, but now that she’s old,
it’s reverted to a time when children were seen
and not heard. Now, you’re not even seen.
And you do all the hearing.
And your voice-box may as well be stone
for all the sound it’s allowed to make.
You do manage to get a “love you” in.
She doesn’t. But nor does she end with curse.
Or a litany of complaints in your direction.
You’re no gossip, no thief, no slob.
That’s something to take to heart.
You’re better than the ones she’s living with.
___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, and is recently published in Shift, Trampoline and Flights. His latest books are Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires. All are available through Amazon. His work is upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.