After my mother’s dying, after
\nthe nurses turned her stiff body
\ntoward me in her bed so I heard
\nup close the lengthening pauses<\/p>\n
of her breathing, after even the hand
\nI held went slack, and her eyes opened wide
\nand sightless forever, I wandered
\nthrough the high, dead grasses,<\/p>\n
past the broken spine of the house
\nshe would not leave, and past
\nthe overgrown shrubs and the raised
\nbeds of weeds, to the nursery barn<\/p>\n
she hadn’t entered for months,
\nexcept in her mind. In that twilight,
\nflakes of the first snow came out
\nof the wind like fireflies, and ancient<\/p>\n
stained rags of canvas swayed
\nin the doorway. Where I was was
\nnot there, yet there, not the living place
\nshe remembered over and over,<\/p>\n
but also dying, everything inside
\nreleasing itself from the dreamlife
\nof her longing: up-ended greenhouse
\nwindows, sprung garden rakes, chicken wire,<\/p>\n
a mulching machine that no longer mulched
\nlisting on two flat tires. Above my head
\nin a heaven of old, forgotten chains
\nnailed to the wall, a rigid choir<\/p>\n
of potted plants hung on a wire,
\nand a hole in the roof which couldn’t
\ncare less kept letting down snow
\non the love seat my mother<\/p>\n
and stepfather never sat in,
\nand his defunct rototiller, and the tools
\non the shelf not stolen by the hired men,
\nwho, year after year, reminded her of him.<\/p>\n
Nobody was there to find it all
\ntogether reclaiming itself in the late light
\nas the given up and given out
\nbut me, also returning from the sorrow<\/p>\n
of her dreamlife, stunned by the clarity
\nof what it wasn’t, and what it was.\n
Explore an earlier version of this poem through a question about craft.<\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n