It was quiet. The women had been lulled to sleep by the usual bustling sounds of caregivers cleaning up after breakfast and nurses dispensing meds. The TV had been turned to one of those channels that shows the classics, like I Love Lucy, Mary Tyler and Moore, and of course, The Andy Griffith Show.  I entered the room, said a few good mornings, and one by one, the women in my mother’s corridor began to wake to start their day once more.

 

The Land the Mind Forgot

Evelyn extends her hands
again and again and again
wanting to clasp anything,
reach towards
anything to buoy her
while she paddles in the air
around the island where she lives.

Just then, a flicker from a time past –
of Mayberry and fishing poles
and Aunt B running for office
against a male-backed Howard
clearly not up for the job.

One might contemplate
the parallels of the day
but these women do not.
They are no longer of the mind
to consider such trite matters.
Theirs is a land
the rest of us, on another horizon,
can neither see
nor taste, nor feel.

Instead, a tune drifts
through the haze
bounces on the sunbeams.
That tune.
The Fishin’ Hole.

Someone, a live someone,
whistles
and suddenly there is joy
as if the women were not watching
the TV and its colored flickers
that strikes lightening upon their faces.
It is not the TV,
but the jolt of nearby whistling
that pierces
the armored proteins
of their minds.

A yellow sock, tapping to a toot.
Fingers, sometimes used as forks,
drum on a lap.
A mouth, that barely opens to speak,
whose lips form a round “o”.

And a sweet someone’s mother
who reaches for another’s hand,
holds it
to cheeks smelling like
the slick formula of Oil of Olay
no longer sold on shelves.

 

10/11/2016

AJW