Nursing Home

She calls you "darlin" as she changes your diaper, one more before her shift ends,
But she'll never know the babies only your arms could soothe.
She quickly glances away from sad sedated eyes- glassy stare-   mirrors of a distant time.
She never saw them sparkle as you sang to a little girl with a long braid.
She posies you to your wheelchair and trembling old hands reach out for something or someone no longer there.
If only she could see the beautiful lace dresses those hands made for a little girl's dolls.
She brings you a tray, nutritionally sound, as bland as the wax paper that covers it.
No more chocolate milkshakes that you love, sneaking sips when no one was looking.
She humors mild requests and feeble talk as you repeat yourself--.mindless muttering,
Ah, but she never saw the wink in your eye or heard the quick wit in your reply.

She is efficient and thorough and not without kindness.
She knows your name,  and your medication schedule.
She is your caretaker, but she knows not who you are.

Oh Grandmother.

Black Eyes

Delicious Torcherer

Black eyes hold me with a lazer gaze,
Plunging  ,  falling without gravity,
an ocean of unknown depth
warm mouths search and command...
fishes slither  in transparent jelly.
whirling, drifting, sinking
deeper into dark salty water.

Relentlessly engulfing black eyes
Power and tenderness wrestle for control
No choice remains.

 Intoxication of oceanic whirlpools,
caverns and day-glo coral,
fishes and eels slither without shame
soft yet unyeilding,
teetering on the brink of destruction
Willingly diving, no weight, no time
 uncharted depth

Total surrender to black eyes, lost...
pulse and breath merge
perfect suspension
Only now as I start to drown do
Black eyes release their bondage.

Slowly like an image  in a developing tray
 eyes open to bare white walls,
The air is sticky and smells of ocean caves.
Treacherous black eyes flashing playful smiles of innocence
(surely they are aware of their threat?)

Like a child he wonders if I know who I am with,
Do you like me? meekly, he asks
Thunder roars and my brain evaporates
Ha, shyly I answer, yes.

White Hibiscus

WHITE HIBISCUS


They lay where they fall, lining the path to my Mother's door like so many corpses.
Petals, glistening white in the sun just a few hours ago, have now turned a fleshy beige,reminiscent of spilled tea.
Twisting and turning around themselves they spiral inward as if to protect their glorious red centers.
Curling edges remind me of  Belgian lace and the tissue itself folds ever so gently  -a thousand tiny wrinkles.
The skin of grandmothers..

I thought of my own Grandmother's frail arms as she lay, a nursing home  prisoner of her own soflty decaying body.
Her Skin,as soft and thin as the finest rice paper krinklies and shrinks like  petals of white hibiscus.
The red in the center of fallen dead flowers darkens like crushed berries,  spilled wine stains on tiny shriveled arms
The petals have slowly closed sealing inside thier  deep red centers -  like worn out wombs--
never again to reveal their secrets of passion and youth.

I collect the dead flowers and gingerly preseve them, more fall each day,  until my house is overflowing.
 I place them  in tissue paper and then in fine silk,  I lay them to rest in beautiful boxes
-- tombs for hibiscus, coffins for flowers.
They have taken over my house, a cemetary of dead decaying beauty but still I keep and protect them , occasionally unwrapping  only to marvel at their sad eroding lovlieness.
 Beautiful fragile mummies.

I think of my Grandmother, my Mother...........my self.