lester

connected meanderings
2006-07-16 02:01:42 (UTC)

Poem: Spencer trip

Spencer Trip

The police made the call; she’d sat in the shade of a tree
On a humid hot day in the middle of July. A neighbor maybe
saw her sitting there
And called for help for an elder in some distress perhaps.

“Just coming back,” she’d told him, “I got my hair done in
Spencer.”
Spencer lay some miles away the policeman politely knew,
And he heard her say that she didn’t drive so he worried.

He drove her home and then called not only us but a niece-
in-law
With her same last name who lives not far away; Irene said
she’d
Be glad to look in on her and she did; they talked of
Mother’s spacious house.

I called Mother, and paused for the tale – none came –
rather a long pause.
I said that a policeman called. She told how she’d been out
And a tree had had this wonderful shade so much better than
the sun.
“Oh, so cool,” she thought, and so she rested, sat beneath
the tree.

I said, “And you’d been to the hairdresser.”
“Why yes,” she said, “the one in Spencer.”
I repeated, “The one in Spencer.”
“Well, I mean she comes from Spencer.”
Each day the person drove from Spencer to her work just
blocks away.

I told this story later to my sister-in-law.
Lisa knew her well –had roomed with her on trips
To Morocco, Portugal, Spain, and Greece.
And suddenly I wept – I surprised myself.

Wayne, her other living son, had called us
When he visited her just two weeks ago. He’d said,
“Mom, you should have some help now; you need to live near
one of us.”
And to his and our surprise she agreed that she should live
near to one of us.

Three siblings and she visited in a good family reunion
just days before.
One sister there one year ago now dead; an older brother
didn’t come for illness.

For calm Mother now, there’s little mess, no fuss.
She’d connected well to those ladies from Spencer.
And had had a good sit beneath a shady tree.
We wish too for such trust, for any of us.




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