Crisis

A fearful mother
makes a fearful child;
he is that child
I am not him.

Somehow, I doubt her fears.
I doubt her phobias
and what haunts her,
the ghosts and the rattlesnake skins
rolling out from underneath her bed and scaring her
when she is all alone in the house,
and the voices on the answering machine and the
glum days, her devils and her dreams
and her depressions.

Urns full,
urns full of everything.

Choking up the ashes of the many urns:
dogs and parakeets and horses and
husbands.

She will not
go in that
room.

Then I think,
yes--nudged toward death each day,
that’s what it is:

lanolin and unbrushed cats with their
memories like floating clouds of hair.
The kidney failure.
And full dishwashers.
The same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner,
the same house and the same
mistrustful bowels.
The same baths. The same sexual organs.
The same friends who pretend to
commiserate
but are off thinking of their own husbands,
dogs, weddings, children, death.

The water heater that seeps blood into the basement.
The wet leaves.
The squirrels and chickadees that are endlessly
hungry.
The clutter.
The snowfalls and rains and sunshine.
The swimming pool that is covered in plastic.
The microwave that is out-of-date.
And all the men that come as close to passion
really
as they can muster, but
life isn’t for passion.

No.
No. It all died, and it’s
all
going to die again.

I understand her plight
then.
And I understand how her plight can become a crisis
occasionally.