Where I've been

I've been working like a mad woman on revising my novel but also, as you'll read below, dealing with my mother's descent into Alzheimer's.  Heart wrenching.

Specimens
1.
Opening my brother’s specimen room door
to pin a new one to the wall
it always seemed we’d startled a flock
of sunning butterflies.  Wings wide -
palm-leaf green, sky turquoise,
sunset orange, star-lit iridescent midnight -
rising up the walls away,  forever
stilled.  Shadows wavered beneath
them so they seemed to move. Just
a trick of light.

2.
In those days my mother wore
sun yellow, grass green, American-beauty red
silks.  Sleek sheaths, dresses
with tight bodices and skirts that fell
like bell flowers around her knees
fluttering as the ceiling
fans circled.  Sinuous lines of cigarette smoke
rose above the chink of drinks
and cocktail party laughter.  She floated
from group to group. Hostess’s antennae tuned to
too much, too little, too lonely, too late,
she skimmed each clustered group, landed, moved
on, spreading her bright
self wide.  And where she lingered
they stilled and said,
There’s sweetness.

3.
The doctor displays
a cross section of two brains.  “In the normal one,”
he points, “the cerebral cortex and hippocampus
are full.”  The lobes spread wide, full and rounded
with nuances of knowing.  “But here you see….”
The other is an ugly leering face:
its jagged edges draw the unkempt hair;
scooped-out hollows make the vacant eyes, the mouth
hanging open in sleep.  Formaldehyde
also kills without destroying outer form.
I held the jar and watched
my brother put the silken creatures in. I watched them
struggle into stillness.  

4.
This woman moves
uncertainly.  Querulously angry she says
“The maid stole my sweater.
I put it here and now it’s gone.”  She is
so fixed that I don’t even argue.  My mother
would have known that
no one – least of all the pretty Ethiopian
who cleans the floors – stole her old
moth-holed cashmere.  My mother
would have soothed this woman struggling
to make sense of an invisible
thief who is stealing
all her memory.  My mother’s daughter
would have said, ‘That’s nonsense Mama.’
But I just hold my tongue.  I watch
and sometimes see
the shadow of my mother moving
in this stranger, or maybe just
a trick of the light
of my memory.