Deborah Guzzi writes full time and travels for inspiration. Her third book The Hurricane is available through Prolific Press. Her verses appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, & The Foxglove Journal in the UK,   Existere, Scarlet Leaf & The Ekphrastic Review in Canada - Tincture, Australia - Cha: Asian Review, China – Eunoia, Singapore - Vine Leaves Journal, Greece - mgv2>publishing, France & Tanka Society of America, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Shooter, Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, Tishman Review, Page & Spine, Spank the Carp & others in the USA. Deborah Guzzi writes full time and travels for inspiration. Her third book The Hurricane is available through Prolific Press. Her verses appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, & The Foxglove Journal in the UK,   Existere, Scarlet Leaf & The Ekphrastic Review in Canada - Tincture, Australia - Cha: Asian Review, China – Eunoia, Singapore - Vine Leaves Journal, Greece - mgv2>publishing, France & Tanka Society of America, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Shooter, Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, Tishman Review, Page & Spine, Spank the Carp & others in the USA. 


Photos by Deborah Guzzi
​

​Trains upon trains--
            exalted trains with pristine potties &
            stewardesses with snack carts, luxury
            trains topped with glass. Only the first
            class can see beyond the concrete shunt
            shuttled through.
 
Avant-garde trains scrolling neon signs
in Japanese, Chinese & English to denizens
who lounge in velveteen seats.
 
            Subway trains with oh, so, polite grannies &
            skinny men in pinstriped suits.
 
            Country trains which have seen better days
            come & go with accordion-hinged umbilical
            connections & polished to perfection
            reflective linoleum floors.
 
Boxed in the riders shake & shutter trundling
now on the route to Korurakubashi.
 
 
 

​No recent clash spewed gore upon the ground I walk
not in revolt, or Civil War; we were the hawks.
Our children left for foreign shores where war stalked.
They did not abstain from duty; they did not balk,
but, few perished here, on the ground where I now walk.
 
So many live in haunted spaces, feast with dead men,
near Omaha, in Normandy, in churches in Rouen.
No blood has been spilled where I rest, thank God, amen.
No Crusades, no WW’s have left corpses in my street;
no bomb has transformed the land or calmness I seek.
Yet, wraiths wander, aimless, in Rouen’s Cathedral bleak,
lost souls from allied bombings, as well as the elite.
Joan moans from a nave of the flames; she speaks.
I shy in my shiver, cold fingers brush my cheek
in Notre Dame de Rouen, Coeur de Lion lies incomplete.
The living and dead abide, their prayers all compete;
I sigh; am I wrong to seek safety and peace?
 
New England fields hold-me-in, ghost-less, and replete,
while death’s horseman, ghostly, gallops in Europe’s streets.
No romance here, dead patriots are war’s reality;
oceans separate me from this dichotomy.
 
 
 

​ 
In this gray hinterland embraced by bay and sea,
between the cracks, all crisscrossed, alpine flowers grow.
Blooms root among the clints sheltering in the lee.
Within each sheet of limestone which streaks the tableau,
the gods have brought surcease with the beauty bestowed.
 
Artful light strays here upon the portal stones
and a hidden river plays music down below,
flowing toward fair Moher cliffs, Hag’s head, The Crone.
Life’s held fast here, the sweetest meat is near the bone
in the birthplace of Kings, O’Connor and O’Loughlin, 
refined here distilled, perfume in a silver cauldron.
 
Lack has not held sway here; pleasures have been honed,
in these treeless, rock-walled fields, butterflies fly free 
reminding us there needs-be a place for small beauties.
 
 
 
 
Lugh* blessed the Burren where the prettiest blossoms bloom
for the waters flow down deep here into Aillwee’s womb.
 
 
 
 
 

​The ringmaster skedaddled from Baghdad by the Bay
but the carnival stayed in town. Erect, proud, empowered
people stride by celebrating life in a Crayola dream.
Awash in color, Bahama blue, scintillating chartreuse--
characters stoked in an antediluvian screenplay,
each aborigine’s walk-about a parceled dream.
 
No surface left to its utilitarian plight, all caressed, redressed,
stroked with the creativity of the artist, all crooned to by
boom box, skateboard smacks, the squeal of low riders
hydraulic lifts or the leather strapped slap of a mariachis’ feet.
 
The burnt bright white light shivers to a Hendricks strum,
and the caffeinated cum—one by one—hooked in to hook up,
to the juke boxes sixties twang. While children play on a soft
foam of green and climb to ride an Aztec snake with mosaic skin
and marbled eyes. Young and old freed from the restrictions,
 
the confines of roles, confound the mainstream: as gay,
trans, straight, bi are all free in The City bleeding poetry.
 

​I wake, egged on by a celestial
fry, sunny side up. The sclera
of my eye’s unable to reject
the call of a spring.
 
Clothed in winter remnants, I
circle a manmade pond charged
with early anglers. I too am 
hooked. Pan’s shadow stalks.
 
Alone, I whisk the gravel walk
wrens bush play, a stream races
laving a weight of jade green
grass, loving the tumbled agates.
                       
So often, too often, the light is
scalding bright and sleep a balm
sought each solitary day. A hollow
down warm, depression’s stay.
 

​Today I awake renewed by the heat
of sun, spring is not to be denied.
The auricle of my ear’s unable to
reject the call of birdsong.
                       
The footpath, quartz crisp grates;
a breeze brings laughter from the
swings. Among the lofty maples,
branches embrace a noontime sun.
 
If I was but a nymph possessed
by glade I know I’d never seek
depression’s lure and I’d abide
in this sylvan glade forever more.
 
This sensory place with taste of
winter fleeing, with geese that honk,
and childish sails which race, such as
I would fill my loneliness with grace. 

​Hearing the bark of my sergeant’s orders
was music to my rifleman’s ears
after trudging through rocky brambles
in mosquito-ridden underbrush.
 
I took a deep drag from the tips of my toes.
 
Cigarettes came with our K-rations,
helping me to become a nicotine drug addict--
a smoke with every cup of coffee, shot of scotch,
or after every sexual encounter.
 
Cigarettes and booze:  Always available at the PX
at deeply discounted prices.
 
It wasn’t until a few years later--
while working at N.Y. U. on a first large-scale study
on the correlation between smoking and cancer
that I followed the lead of the chain-smoking
director of the project, who quit smoking cold-turkey
the day the malarkey about smoking was revealed.
 

I’m never alone--
your reservoir will never run dry.
I skirt bloodsuckers and stings of bumble bees--
listen to nightingales and applaud butterflies.
 
I tell my story to every starfish and anemone
that will listen and scrutinize corals
of every color, shade, and hue.
I dive into the bottom of the river
to get a glimpse of the epilogue at the end.
 
It is full of surprises.
 
Gone is yesterday’s scorpion with hairy legs.
Fish smile back at me pleased with the bugs
they have found to eat. I sleep, a sated babe
on a stone washed clean of my sins.
 
Baptized in the river,
I make the sign of the cross
in case there is a God--
 
I wear a yarmalka
to cover my bald spot,
and a Foy-Mall on my wrist
because we’re meditators
who sit back to back as one
in a love that never ends.

​

​Hangs on a lamp on my desk,
revealing my serial number,
blood type, and religion.
 
I have the letter “Y” since
I’m not a “P’ (protestant),
“C” (catholic) or “H” (Hebrew).
 
When the artillery shell
burst in front of me,
I saw stars I’d never seen before.
 
They blocked the view of a holograph
of my head lying in a bombed-out crater.
 
I can still hear the Quartermaster
Graves Registration guys spreading
love everywhere as they round up
the dead bodies around me.
 
My teeth hurt clamped down in lockjaw
on my dog tag. I’m heaved into a truck
more dead than alive.
 
The men had to consult our chaplain
to find out how to bury me.
 
The Chaplain laughed--
advising them to post a question mark
where a Cross or Star of David
would normally appear.
 
I make the sign of the cross
even though I’m and agnostic.
 

​ 
Buried under an avalanche of money
he counts every night— he wonders why
the rays of light glinting off his pile of gold
still leave him sitting alone in the dark.
 
Money, the only meaning in his solitary life
never brought him one day of happiness.
He’s never touched or been touched
by another human being.
 
The only time he felt loved--
was being bathed by mother as a young toddler.
She shampooed his hair and fondled his genitals
to stop him from crying when soap got in his eyes.
 
He now pleasures himself in a nightly bath
in a window to a vividly remembered past--
thinking of his mother’s pendulous breasts
and her intoxicating scent while he bathes
in the soapy skins of dollar bills slathered
in cobalt blue bottles of Evening In Paris.
 
He deposits the ghosts of his unborn progeny
all over the sudsy waters of his dollar bills.
 
He weeps.  
 

​Father loved me like a mother,
but when his world fell apart,
our house shook with lightening–like scars,
 
yet he soldiered on with a shot of schnapps
in the morning as he stood at attention
and sang in a loud, fiercely proud voice:
 
Allons, enfants de la patrie le jour de gloire est arrive.
 
He taught me to swim on his back.
 
On summer mornings, we swam
from the Coney Island pier to the end
of Brighton Beach, pursuing the horizon
like a 6-masted sloop cutting through
rotund Russian ladies and around
slim surfers sliding up and down
the wind-swept waves of the sea.
 
The sounds of Coney were never far from my ears--
the bass drum beat of the singing mermaids
in the Mermaid Parade,
and the unbridled joy of calliope music
that brings tears to my eyes
whenever I’m near a moving carousel.
 
Swimming into homeport,
I still hear Father’s orders:
Land Ho— All hands on deck—
drain the scuppers
and make ready to abandon ship!
 
                                                  

​Boys will be boys,
when they know a hole from a hole in the wall.
Girls will be girls,                    
because of course they are.
Lovers will be set in their ways,
because sometimes you can be too close to see.
Parents, there's not much to say right now,
speak to your children.
 
Miles of empty space,
won’t feel them til it’s all we’ve got.
With nothing but time,
and the earth beneath our feet,
we could do with some peace
these days.
 
 

​We discuss about how we can win
And sometimes about how we lost.
We discuss great people
Their charm, palaces and money.
We can talk hours
About those expensive clothing brands
Levis, Park Avenue, Allen Solly
And so on goes the endless list.
We talk about cricket, nature
And places to be visited.
We cannot ignore those roadside stalls
Selling our favourite food
But we do ignore many things.
We ignore the torn clothes
We ignore the slums
We never discuss about
Hands with scratches
And those unhealed wounds.
We discuss about fresh roses
And forget the wilted flowers.
We discuss health and youth
But we don’t think about
Healing and the old.
We never discuss solutions.

​An intense cyclone has hit a city
Heavy downpours, floods and
Loss of lives
All come in bonus.
Trees have fallen down and
Birds have lost their home.
Somewhere in another city
My friend prays for the safety
Of her relatives
After watching the news
On the television and
I stare at her from my window
Unaware of the danger
Unaware of the loss
Unaware of those lost birds.
I drink a glass of warm milk
Mixed with my favourite chocolate syrup
And go to bed as usual.
In the morning
As I open my eyes here
Many have closed their eyes there forever.
I complain of being unlucky
After my mother wakes me up so early
Unaware of my fate
Unaware of how fortunate I am.

​The pillows on my bed
Are not stuffed with cotton.
They are stuffed with
My mother’s old sarees
And lots of other childhood memories.
The picture hanging there on the wall
Is still full of vigour and charm.
The nail hammered into the wall
Ten years ago with precision
Appears rusty yet very strong
Unlike decaying minds
And constipated thoughts.
The flower vase gifted
To my aunt by us
Is a part of the soil now
In their backyard.
It hasn’t lost its shape
Just the colour has faded
And scratches have deepened.

Craig Kennedy writes poetry and short fiction. Recent poems have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Blue Mountain Review.  Some of his literary influences include W.C. Williams, Wallace Stevens, Neruda and Bukowski. Craig lives in the New York City area, where he works as a business consultant.   
 

​An impregnable
lavender
rose
           drops
to the ground
           defeated
by the dark breeze
the malice of time,
 
desolate
screaming
forsaken
           driven
to a sadness
           guarded
no longer
by the thorns,
 
prey for
the feral cat’s
yellow flashing
           eye
dusted by the sandy soil
           sacrificed
to the world at the
close of the day.         

​Friday night west side
the check cashing place is full
jaunty guys
with their caps askew
tight tops on the women
all cleavage
as they call friends on the mobiles
and the man walking in front of me
has a small fortune in bottles
headed for the nickel redemption.
There’s a yoga studio on the corner
only for kids it says
instant karma kindergarten.

​The pitcher
is pale green
and transmits
the sunlight
to show me
the water level.
It is almost empty.
 

​Where is God when I’m passing
the gas station on
this stretch of suburban road
sky and pavement winter gray
the sign for the full gospel church
blue and white
services at 7am.
 
 

Annette is a writer and journalist who specialized in social justice issues during her 30-year professional career.  Her poetry tries to reflect her belief that all of the arts can educate us about important issues such as economic, gender, health, and racial equality…even if told from a very personal point of view.  She recently retired to Collingwood, Ontario, Canada on the shores of beautiful Georgian Bay.

​Our father cried
Not for me
Not for you
But for the realization
That he would never be
Capable
Of what he now knew
He had never been capable.

​How bright.  How red.  How tiny.
I can taste you each morning when I get up, flawed.
But you are always perfect.
I stop and stare for a moment
And then go and de-flaw.
I come back and look again.
You are like an Old Master.
Here in my hall.  In my hall!
Even your thick, deep, black frame brings
Vermeer, Rubens and Rembrandt
To mind.
If I wet the tip of my finger and run it over you
And put it back in my mouth
Will it taste sweet?
Or will you laugh at me and make jokes with your friends in the Louvre
About me licking you?

​Even though the moth
Will be burned by the flame
He still flies into it.
 
I need you.
You need me.
 
C’est comme ça.

Who is this man? 
Who is this self?
Was that man not a child, a brother?
Did he not have uncles and aunts? 
No friends, teachers, priests, supporters, investors?
Did the colour of his skin really not affect his chances of getting the job?
Was intelligence, discipline, dedication and desire all that was really needed?
Didn’t his grandfather ever show him a book of art that made him see more clearly?
Didn’t his father’s promotion enable him to live in a better neighbourhood and go to a better school?
Did that have no effect whatsoever?
Didn’t changes in legislation enable his aunt (a woman!) to get a loan, to help her to help him?
How about the dozens of tea-cosies Grandma knitted and sold so he could go on a school exchange to France? 
Vraiment?  Cela ne l’a pas aider?
Didn’t his wife’s hard work at home and in the coffee shop make any difference to his success at all?
Surely one “ism” or another helped him in some way.
Was there no chance encounter at a bus stop?  No advertising slogan.  No poem. 
No word of wisdom from anyone?  No counselling?  Never any advice?
How about the French teacher.  The holiday employer.  The ambitious girl-friend?
Or the bank manager - who simply liked him.  And took a chance.
 
Didn’t looking at his sleeping children move him to anything other than a gentle kiss?
 
​

​Don’t look at me
Not this me
This is not who I am
Don’t think you know me
You only know this me
Who is not who I am
This me is the sum of a life
Which you don’t know
A long life
Don’t speak to this me
In that way
I am not a child
I am not hard of hearing
I am not an idiot
Look at me
This me is me
 
 

​Three words.  Three hundred years of history.
No longer a treatment for malaria.
No longer being downed by white-pith-helmeted officers of the British East India Company
No more being sipped in fluttering white lace gowns
Softly brushing the impeccable lawns of the cricket club in Mumbai.
No more rulers of the Raj being served on silver trays
By flawlessly spruced-up and thus acceptable servants.
No clinking of first-class crystal in a toast to Queen Vickie,
On the trains fleeing north to the cool hill stations of the Himalayas.
To Simla.
From the sickening heat of Delhi.
Now it’s just you and me.
In our back yard.
On plastic chairs.
With a wedge of lime
And a couple of ice cubes.
 

​or consider your father’s suicide from
the safety of 25 years away
 
set your own failures against his
 
sleep through december
         through january and february
 
take whatever pills you can find
burn whatever you need to keep warm and
then wake up lost on the morning the
flood finally creeps into your house
 
look for your youngest son
but his room is empty
 
answer the phone with the
proper amount of fear in your voice
 
always these goddamned ghosts on the
other end of the line
laughing at the bloodsoaked mess
your life has become
 
 

​flat expanse of houses beneath
pale october sunlight,
powerlines and telephone poles and gas stations,
distance to the river,
sister hanging out beneath the bridge and
we are not no one and this is not
nowhere but the possibility exists
 
the desert is within
 
grow up and then start to grow old
 
marry and then divorce
 
everywhere
the smell of decay and of burning
 
bones buried in back yards
 
this woman i know who refuses to
believe that the freeway is a lie
 
thinks she’ll escape even though she’s
tied to her daughter, to her granddaughter
 
i give her a shovel and
show her where to dig and
what she finds is herself but
her eyes are closed
 
says there’s nothing to see
 
asks why i don’t love her anymore
 
 

or when the sunlight
tastes like gasoline or where the
clouds gather into fists
above the hills
 
this woman i know who
says she loves me but
that she won’t leave her husband
 
won’t walk to the edge of the field
where the child has been bound
and shot and
if there’s a truth i would have you know
it’s that the war cannot be stopped
 
these men who have written their
names in blood on the courthouse wall
are the biggest kinds of assholes
 
are as useless as poets and
if i were in california
i would be kneeling at the feet of
saint maria
 
i would have
no more use for words
 
would forget the feel of salt rubbed
into cracked and peeling skin
the sound of metal grinding against
metal on ten-below afternoons
and i would learn to forget
my children’s names
 
i will learn to build
the holiest of towers from their
tiny bones
 
we are nothing without
this vast empty space between
joy and pain
 
 

 
 
river choked with ice in the dark and
all of the stars left nameless
 
venus low over the hills, brilliant and sinking and
it’s true that nothing you or i say will ever matter and
it’s true that nothing you or i do will ever
change the world
 
it’s the taste of blood as we whisper in
curtained rooms, and it’s the futility of defiance as we
scream ourselves hoarse against frozen windows
 
it’s the end of january in the last year we will
be together, and we stand naked at the water’s edge
 
hold tight to each other like the future depends on it
and it does of course but
whatever future there is will arrive with or without us
 
whatever past we had will be remembered by no one
 
after all the lies i’ve told you, here we are
suddenly at the truth
 
 
 

​moving east through six a.m.
tunnels of rain, november, december,
age of desperate ghosts, this woman w/
the pale scars keeps slipping pills
between yr lips, keeps speaking in a
language he doesn’t quite understand
 
only 10,000 miles to the coast
 
only the ghost of frida kahlo
to light the way
 
sister asleep in the back seat and he
misses the exit and then the
one after that, and these faded plastic
wreaths w/ their tilted wooden crosses
on the side of the highway
 
this first grey light of day
 
thinks let me keep my name
 
thinks let the suicides all
take someone else’s
 
starts with love and then
burns his way down to the
ghostwhite bones
 
 
 
 

Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for four years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for three years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years. He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society. He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS.  He is retired and lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda.  He has two daughters and four grandchildren.

​ 
In the painting
‘Christina’s World”
Andrew Wyeth
Depicts
A black-haired woman,
In skirt and blouse,
Raising herself
Off the ground and
Gazing up a hill
At a gray
Unpainted house,
Barn,
And outbuildings.
 
Is she longing
For a past love?
Is she seeking
A lost
Childhood?
 
An air of mystery
Lingers
In this
Composition
That will always
Make us wonder.
 
 
 
 

​When I am dancing,
I must say,
I step lively
In every way.
 
I swerve and sway
For all to see,
And sing out very candidly
And I certainly
Step lively.
 
I promenade so delightfully
My partner laughs uproariously,
Because I certainly
Step very lively.
 
As long as the music sounds
I vigorously twirl my partner round
Because I certainly
Step very lively.
 
And when the dance is finally over
I escort her off the dance floor
And she smiles so lovingly
Because I certainly
Step very lively.
 
 

​ 
                                                            He thought that he could fly
                                                            And glide just like a bird
                                                            And gaze at all below
                                                            He took the leap of faith
 
                                                            But unlike any bird
                                                            He plunged to earth
                                                            Smashed himself and died
 
                                                            His soul flew from below--
                                                            Unburdened by his flesh
                                                            Heavenward he climbed
 
                                                            He trusted in a faith
                                                            And found a better life
                                                            With his dear God above

​There was a time
When I
Embraced summer,
When I could
Cast aside shoes
And run barefoot.
 
Oh to run barefoot
Through morning dew
Or feel the dust
Between my toes.
 
There was a time
I was six years old
And enjoyed
The entire summer.
 
But that time is gone
And I now
Wear shoes.
 
Oh where
Has that
Little boy
Gone?
 
 

​If you live long enough
You will be as old as I am.
I can’t remember yesterday,
But I can remember
Seventy years ago
When Mother was alive
And we had cocker spaniel
Puppies.  We named the mother
Cinder and her son
Was named Taffy.
My playmates across the street
Were named Jamie and Polly Poindexter
And life was sunny and good.
 

​wish I still knew how to talk about games
movies television sports
 
blue fish waddling onto soil of questions trudges
leaves bodyprints wet move
 
closer to some common thread we may yet find
yet know a fishing line in the reel of your hand
 
mouth brain our friendship was incorrigible
as the moon in a poem in a lit mag
 
super nintendo and the cement unfinished
scent of basements carpeted staircases doritos
 
always going down down down
affection every thump downward
 
like the rest of life tumbling
through deserts of thought mist sandstorm
 
the sun wrangles some truth out of stranded
windows translucent sunlight
 
shifting across the wooden table
of distance time summers
 
 
 

​ 
in a moscow hotel room
shadow brokers partied
 
with stolen american
cyberweapons over the
 
counterintelligence
they wanted public
 
the americans
drank everything
 

​driving in circles
around the city
 
snow caps on all cars
little mountains shivering
 
tiny motors no one knows
the name of anyone
 
only a word on a screen
a face forgotten
 
and city lights
there’s a light rain mixed
 
with snow
the roads not slick
 
I am driving
picking up passengers
 
at the end of the night
I am no further
 
than I was
at the beginning.
 
 

​Rolling Acres mall
outside the record store
white hats enter
to leave shadows
 
every small step     
a rattle of longing        
blueprints for after
-college dreams
 
rosewood a tinge
in glass displays
reflecting fluorescence
so bright you sneeze
 
rockets then angle
toward the stars   
didn’t the Etch-
A-Sketch always lure
 
you canvas and sky         
hunched over red
tablet twisting
striated knobs
 
handmade lines
stretched star to
star everything
tethered
 
together
a fishing
wire
baited
 

​The tree outside my bedroom window, my favorite tree, is straight and tall, with branches that throw a canopy of leaves over the grass below, protecting the soft blades from the worst of the rain and snow. But there is one place on the tree, small really, where an ax had taken a bite. It is just a slice, a tiny fissure. From it, the sap had flowed and dried, leaving an amber mess of bugs in its wake. And at the bottom, a sliver of black leg hangs suspended and I wonder: who left that behind?
Below the tree, my mother stands, arms crossed with cigarette dangling between her fingers, wrinkle-tanned face lifted to the sky, smoke streaming from pursed lips, past green leaves. Below the branches, my little brothers play war games while my sister sings softly to the doll she holds by its jet-black hair. And I watch from my window, black nails drying in the hot summer sun.
There was a time when I played beneath the safe canopy of the tree. Five children, duck-duck-goosing, and giggling as we all fall down. One parent, smiling behind smoke, amber-filled glass in hand. But the gap between my little siblings’ single-digit ages and my own double digits, is no longer bridged by my brother, my favorite brother, so straight and tall.
It was different tree that took my brother, when my mother crashed the car. The gash from the crushed metal split the tree wide open.
And still the amber liquid flows.

​My mother saw demons in the daylight. Black horned beasts consumed by fire; long fingers grasping.
I tell my daughter I’ll see crystal-blue fairies with sharp elvish faces. We’ll ride hounds past the sickle moon and hunt with Orion. That is the nature of Lewy body dementia. Some see demons; others see possibilities.
 
My ever-fearful mother told me the old wing of her nursing home had burned down, that’s why she’d been moved. I didn’t tell her she was moved because her old wing was for short-term care.
My architect daughter says someday she’ll be rich. She’ll build me the best nursing home ever. We laugh.
 
One visit, my mother’s hand flitted above her lap unable to land. She cried, no. No! and wagged her head. I removed loose leaf paper from my briefcase, papers with budgets and red pen markings, and gave them to her. She fingered the pages and relaxed. We spent that afternoon talking about tax code.
 
I tell my daughter, I’ll need a computer, or at least a keyboard.
And paper and a red pen, she says.
 
One Sunday, my mother in her wheel chair and I in a rocker, listened to a drawling banjo version of Be Still My Soul.
“Mom, should we leave now?” I asked.
Oh God, yes, she whispered.
The next time I visited, I brought an iPod and a speaker and we listened to Les Miserables
 
I tell my daughter, let me hear The Lord of the Rings one more time; and all those books I’ve never read, the ones on my bookshelf next to my bed, the ones by McDermott, Diamant, and Monk Kidd. And all the others I never got through. I’ve read Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye, but I haven’t had time for Slaughterhouse Five—
Please, she rests her hand on top of mine. Make me a list. I’ll never remember.
 
Once, as a young mother, the drive to do something with my life was powerful. “Mom, what is my purpose?” Her answer? Maybe your family is your purpose. And it was. Until it wasn’t.
 
Do you know, I had a friend who counted the vacations she had left to spend with her children?
 
“Mom?” My daughter squeezes my hand. “You’ll want to hear Where the Red Fern Grows.”
Yes. Yes!  I laugh. I love those hounds. But please, no Walking Dead.”