Slim Picking

Slim Picking
For Mama
(May 11, 1920  - August 14, 2012)

I cannot watch your frail frame shrink
in your housedress. Sunny lifts you
effortlessly, you are lighter than a proverb.
Yet I'm glad when his ministrations

are over for that is my cue to get
your bag of bones next to my flesh.
Usually adroit, I am in a panic
when I cut deeper than your cuticle

and your blood spurts before your "Ouch!"
I almost forget the mysteries as, past
the band-aid on your toe, our roles
reverse when I lead and you follow.

Your hospital-scented skull assumes
a pieta-like tableau only peculiarly
for I cradle your idiom feather.
Then I regret that I cannot summon

the stories that I saved before coming
to beg your gossip of old instead
which I used to detest. You smirk,
like you knew I knew, that your few

friends hardly visit to underscore my rare
presence. My heartstrings tug at the guilt
but you are a picture of mischief like
I could not believe. I want to stay

longer than my alibi allowed but insist
my reason was not just distance
and you are irrepressibly perceptive.
I wonder where your wrinkles hide

the tenacity that used to stalk
my whereabouts when you were hale.
Under his breath, Sunny mumbles
you, and a meager dinner, and a morsel

catches your throat, and he cannot watch.