Tag: Melancholy Hyperbole

Church Visits

Poem & photo by Elizabeth

CHURCH VISITS

We brought you this poinsettia—
would you like it in your room?
Your drawl rich as poppies
introduces you and your children to my mom
who smiles, tries to remember if she knows you,
dementia shredding whole stands of friends each night.

Where would you like me to put it?
No directive in your mist of questions,
knowing Alzheimer’s has already clear-cut her choices.
You sit beside Mom’s bed and talk
with a comfort never shared in our family—
your husband in the reserve, children,
teens really, open as sky beside you.

But when you say your surname, Church, I cringe,
expecting Mom’s grooved tirade against religion
yet it builds a temple pointing to the majesty of blue
through which our planet spins within its womb of stars.

You are the woman I refused to be—
soft-bodied, eyes averted, submissive to spouse and god—
while I’m independent, direct, decisive,
yet am weary of my strength, worn
from years of keeping myself and others alive.

In fact I’m drowning in competence, longing to shed my life and slip into your rose-glow skin reflecting your life’s devotion to faith, service, listening presence, as you teach your children this steadfast path to kindness. Within your sphere of serenity, I pray: Throw me a rope, please, over and o–

Thank you to the editors of Melancholy Hyperbole for first publishing this poem.

Soaked

Art & poem by Elizabeth
SOAKED


I want you in my home to know you’re not alone 
in those long-shadowed halls paced by perpetually 
lost—dementia scouring their last stains of memory

          more than safe,
          I want you to feel safe
          yet I’m drowning in this 
          deep dank bog of lung

rain sluices from leaves beneath a starless sky
as distant shouts urge me to find my way back
yet I am beyond lost having unwrapped and dropped 
their safety rope from my waist so I could reach you
 
       all my cells replicated yours when you were 
       my sole cord to life—for that I worshipped you 
               till the God, Hormones, ascended

as I stumble over elephantine roots, 
machete through plants so large dinosaurs 
must still exist on this swampy earth,
my lungs match each step's suck of mud, 
every breath a drowning, yet I won’t 
release this taut line between us mottled 
with white ash and blood dark wine nor
understand how your Emmental brain 
won't let you walk or know where you are 
in time, yet provides lucid wit and end-
less memory for the inconsequential

                                    

       years now since I severed and flung 
our rope in your flames yet you remain 
      tangled as worry and seared to my palm
when I reach for you in wake or in dream
      unable to rest or breathe for want of you



Thank you to the editors of Melancholy Hyperbole for first publishing this poem in an earlier version.