BARBARA RATH - PROSE-POEMS

Barbara Rath writes prose poetry and fiction in the dark hours that surround full-time technical work. She's been published in the online journal, The Birds We Piled Loosely, is a member of Grub Street in Boston, Romance Writers of America, and the NH Writers’ Project (NHWP). Ms. Rath's writing journey is chronicled at http://barbararath.com.

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​Amber Mess

​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.

A Purposeful Life
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​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.”