Encore Presentation

 Barbara Crooker  

 

 Barbara Crooker and her mother's on her 90th birthday

Mother and Me

By Barbara Crooker

My mother was a wonderful person; after my father died, we grew very close, and we moved her down here when she needed Assisted Living.  I was her primary caregiver for her last eight years, and with her when she died.  I think I will miss her forever.  These poems are from my book, Gold.



MY MOTHER’S BODY KNITS ITSELF INTO A NEST OF PAIN

bones milling themselves into flour.
No escape, not sitting in the chair
with cushions, not lying in bed
wrapped in night’s black afghan,
but pain as a constant, the one X
equals in every equation.

No honey is sweet enough for this dark cup of tea.
I bake her favorite shortbread, make peanut butter fudge,
bring her dinner in a wicker basket, like Red Riding Hood.
She doesn’t turn into a wolf, just the ghost of herself,
becoming part of the past while she’s still here.  I might
as well carry sugar in my hands; grain by grain, she sifts away.


WORLD’S END

We were sitting on the rocks, my husband
and son, down by the Loyalsock Creek,

in a stone cabin built by the CCC.  Back
home, my mother cannot sleep—her recliner’s

too small, the hospital bed’s too hard—
like Goldilocks in the bears’ cottage,

nothing is just right.  Nothing will ever be
just right, as her body fails and fails

some more.  Up on a ridge above the Loyalsock,
the trees are at their peak.  Even the creek water

burns red, orange, yellow.  The cell phone
in my pocket in case hospice calls thumps

against my thigh. It’s one of those brilliant
blue days you think should last forever,

the trees glowing redder, starry asters
lining the rocky path.  Back in the cabin,

pork and cranberries have been slowly cooking
all day. I boil wild rice, add toasted pine nuts,

yellow raisins. At home, my mother lifts
a bowl, fills her nebulizer, inhales the hot steam,

breathes more easily for a little while. I throw
more wood in the black iron stove, whose hunger

is insatiable, whose belly can never be filled.


IN PRAISE OF DYING
after a poem by Sue Ellen Thompson

For giving us these last six weeks
where we reversed, and I read to her,
a novel about Africa, where neither of us

has ever been.  For letting that novel
remind her how much she loved donuts,
their greasy faces shining through brown

paper bags.  For Dunkin’ Donuts,
their many glazed varieties.
For the afternoons that weren’t too hot,

weren’t too humid, that let me push her
in the wheelchair to see the koi flashing in
and out of the water lilies.  For letting me be

her legs.  When the end came, for letting me
slip some soup into her parched mouth,
rub cream on her hands and feet,

place a sweater around her shoulders,
all bone now.  Watch her breathe
in the night, like she watched me

when I was new.  For letting her
go out as quietly as a candle
that has used up all its wax.  

For letting me be there
for her last breath
that fluttered out like a moth.

PEEPS

In those last few months my mother didn’t want to eat, this woman
who made everything from scratch, and who said of her appetite,
I eat like a bricklayer.  Now she listlessly stirred the food
around her plate, sometimes picking up a piece of chicken,
then looking at it as if to say, What is this?  Wouldn’t put
it in her mouth.  But Peeps!  Marshmallow Peeps!  Spun sugar
and air, molded in clever forms:  a row of ghosts, a line
of pumpkins, a bevy of bunnies, a flock of tiny chicks,
sometimes in improbable colors like purple and blue. . . .
One day, she turned over her tray, closed her mouth, looked up
at me like a defiant child, and said, I’m not eating this stuff.  
Where’s my Peeps?

When it was over, the hospice chaplain said some words
in my back yard, under the wisteria arch.  The air was full
of twinkling white butterflies, in love with the wild oregano.
Blue-green fronds of Russian sage waved in front of the Star
Gazer lilies, and a single finch lit on a pink coneflower, and stayed.
When there were no more words or tears, I ripped open
the last packet of Peeps, tore their little marshmallow bodies,
their sugary blood on my hands, and gave a piece to each
of us.  It melted, grainy fluff on our tongues, and it was good.

    


A WOMAN IS HER MOTHER. THAT’S THE MAIN THING.

                                    a semi-glosa
                     The title is a line by Anne Sexton.
     The italicized lines are by Dylan Thomas and Sharon Olds.

A woman is her mother, that’s the only thing.
After the first death, there is no other.
It’s April, and loss is in the air.
Trees lose their blossoms in this weather.

After the first death, no other
grief matters.  April, loss everywhere,
trees let their blossoms fall.
I want you back, I want you here,

even though April’s loss brings on the flowers,
trees forming new buds along each branch.
But there’s no turning back for us,
whose calyx, pistil, ovary blooms in flesh.

And each tree has a different seed:  wings, pods, cones.
It’s an old story, . . .replacement, a way back
as a grandchild wears your eyes, your chin, your mouth.
But it’s not you, to whom I need to talk.

The only way back is to go forward.
It’s April, grief everywhere.
I want to call you on the telephone.
A woman is her mother, but alone.