New Jersey

New Jersey (Form borrowed from Mary Oliver's "Singapore")

At my parent’s house, in New Jersey,
in the hallway by the powder room door,
an numbness was torn from my heart.
My father stood bent in the door frame, assisting my mother
on the toilet.

Panic rang in my stomach,
and I searched, among my memories, for the tall expanse of an oak tree.

Our mothers should always be greater than us,
and in this day and age, much greater than our fathers.
Confident as mountains, say, with unfathomable, flowering fields.
Skyscrapers, perhaps, for they are accomplished, too.
And of course, there is the sky.
God is also wise, but if she were not available, a blackbear, eating huckleberries, fiercely,
would teach me something about strength.
Really, a daughter wants to rest her life in the shade of a great, old oak tree.

When my mother heard my footsteps and called my name,
I had no knowledge of her voice and no sound with which to respond.
Her humanness and her courage rasped together in a cold wind,
and for a moment, I was uprooted.
She said I love you and I said I love you. What was this fear?
Everyone goes to the bathroom.

And every child seeks proof of life’s success, wants affirmation
that life is worth the cost of birth.
There is this need, yes, but we also must learn to yield,
to allow ourselves to be cared for, intimately,
though that is certainly harsh.

My father, standing at her side, folded the toilet paper.
Leaning over her, he flushed the bowl.
Bending deeper, he drew her elastic waist pants from her ankles,
up over her distended stomach.
They moved like dancers.
My mother’s hands, in his, were like quivering leaves.

I don’t pretend for a moment that she could not care for me.
But I did want her to stand up, walk forward from her chair, from her cancer,
and whirl me through the air.
This did not happen.

If we were always strong, who could bear us?
No, I did not expect a recovery, but I saw then
the way that quivering makes us grasp life
with more firmness and love than we dare in health. Think of
the way she laughed as she took the toilet paper, like it was some kind of inside joke;
how she said I love you to protect me; Think of
the way this poem places her beside mountains, beside flowers and trees.