Hurry. Our mother needs a little help right now
all the time. "How was it we...
got here?" she asks, surveying her own neat new twilit
apartment. "Excuse me, but when will we be
getting home?"
And so
my sister runs downstairs
again to check, my brother moves months at a time up
from Florida, at breaks I fly across country to be the one
saying: "Wednesday, yup, today's Wednesday. Hmm,
let's eat the toast you already made, great! And there's more
over here." And Martine and Susan and Betsey,
then Annemarie and Linda also take turns.
In the middle,
she,
of all this business
at the nice new kitchen window might forget she always did
love a sunset. But she raises her tea to point: "Will you look!
At what the light is doing to the dark out there."