An amateur neurologist
I study my mother
inventory with her uhhh for her
an ancient storehouse of tatters.
-the wide vocabulary?
much retained
-the Yiddish sardonicism?
chuckle yup
-specifics of home since her flight from Brooklyn?
vanished
-memories of her husband of 44 years, father of her children ?
a dentist yes, but nothing more, not even a name
-a visceral recollection of her unsatisfactory in-laws?
ughhh, ya
-her parents dead 30 years?
whereabouts plumbed daily, “ why wasn’t I informed?”
-the 2 boys who live upstairs but never come down to see her?
ever present, but “just let them be”
-grandchildren?
he plays cards, but never comes to see me.
We sit mornings alone in the corporate garden
bundled against the June balm
more than ever serene
muse about the precedence
of existence and essence -
Sartre popularizing Heidegger: we decide what to be…
or de Beauvoir’s sedimentation: implacable forces resisting efforts to change.
The latter I think, thank you.