Church Visits

Your drawl rich as poppies
We brought you this poinsettia—
would you like it in your room?
introduces you and your children to my mom
who smiles as she 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.
Then you sit around 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 said your name, Church, I cringed,
expecting Mom’s grooved tirade against religion;
instead, it built a temple, steeple pointing to
the majesty of blue in 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—
instead, I’m independent, direct, decisive,
yet I am weary of my strength,
worn from years of keeping myself and others alive.

In fact, I’m drowning in competence and want to trade lives,
shed mine and slip into your rose-glow skin reflecting
years of faith and service and breath as you teach our future
the steadfast path to kindness. In your serene presence,
I pray that you will find a way to throw me a rope.

Elizabeth Weaver came to writing through poetry yet is currently focused on completing a novel, the main character of which has a photoblog. Some of Elizabeth’s writing and visual art can be viewed on elizabethweaver.wordpress.com as well as 5AM and dirtcakes.