Archive
05/09/09
Second Lunch
This mild May Saturday afternoon, I delivered, to my mom, A vase crowded with three dozen sweetheart roses,
In anticipation of her celebratory occasion: Mother's Day — her sixty-eighth (I'm her first child, born in 1941).
Her tremoring hand in mine, we navigated the patio, Which she and my now-deceased dad Contracted to have set, brick by brick,
Just shy of sixty years ago, When I'd barely turned ten and she was thirty-five, He in his early forties, a captain of industry.
We investigated that hallowed space Engraved, in her memory, with barbecues, parties She was incapable of bringing back into focus,
Noticed every busy thing infusing the surrounds: Butterflies fluttering, hovering; bees buzzing; Birds resounding in roundelays;
A nest neatly pastiched into the unkempt rose bushes; Trees in their last stages of degradation and decay; The white colossus of the aged house itself;
And, stranded at least twenty feet from habitable lawn, On the desert of patio bricks, A wriggling, obviously suffering earthworm.
"Mom, wait here, one minute, While I go inside, to find something I can use To move it, keep it from drying out.
"I don't want to pick it up in my hands; it's slimy." "I don't want it to bite you." "Don't worry. It won't. It's not a snake."
I went into the house. She stood there. I reappeared, with a postcard I used, to lift the worm, Place the creature, gently, on a tuft of grass,
Back behind the rose bushes. "Take my hand, Mom. Let me show you where I put that worm."
Though wobbly, she followed my lead, Fixed her occluded eyes, as best she could, On the worm, already burrowing earthward.
She squeezed my hand, to steady herself As well as confirm her appreciation Of my kindness toward a lowly worm.
"L.D., thank you for the beautiful bouquet. You're always so thoughtful. You never forget. You don't have to leave yet, do you?
"Come inside. Let me fix you something." "Mom, it's already after three." Though I'd eaten, I sat down with her, in the kitchen, for another lunch.
05/09/09
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