#as easily as if youd said it lifelong

[ceravisiae]

THE STREAM

Mona Van Duyn

for my mother

Four days with you, my father three months dead.

You can't tell months from years, but you feel sad,

and you hate the nursing home. I've arranged a lunch

for the two of us, and somehow you manage to pinch

the pin from Madrid I bought you closed at the neck

of your best red blouse, put on new slacks, and take

off your crocheted slippers to put on shiny shoes,

all by yourself. "I don't see how you could close

that pin. You look so nice!" "Well, I tried and tried,

and worked till I got it. They didn't come," you said.

"Mother, I'm sorry, this is the wrong day,

our lunch is tomorrow. Here's a big kiss anyway

for dressing up for me. The nurse will come in

tomorrow and help you put on your clothes and pin."

"These last few days her mind has certainly cleared.

Of course the memory's gone," your doctor said.

Next day they bathed you, fixed your hair and dressed

you up again, got a wheelchair and wheeled you past

the fat happy babbler of nonsense who rolled her chair

all day in the hall, the silent stroller who wore

a farmer's cap and bib overalls with rows

of safety pins on the bib, rooms of old babies

in cribs, past the dining hall, on down to a sunny

lounge in the other wing. "Where can I pee,

if I have to pee? I don't like it here, I'm afraid.

Where's my room? I'm going to faint," you said.

But they came with the lunch and card table and chairs

and bustled and soothed you and you forgot the fears

and began to eat. The white tablecloth, the separate

plate for salad, the silvery little coffee pot,

the covers for dishes must have made you feel

you were in a restaurant again after all

those shut-in years. (Dad would never spend the money,

but long ago you loved to eat out with me.)

You cleaned your soup bowl and dishes, one by one,

and kept saying, "This is fun! This is fun!"

The cake fell from your trembly fork, so I fed

it to you. "Do you want mine, too?" "Yes," you said,

"and I'll drink your milk if you don't want it." (You'd

lost twelve pounds already by refusing your food.)

I wheeled you back. "Well, I never did that before!

Thank you, Jane." "We'll do it again." "Way down there,"

you marveled. You thanked me twice more. My eyes were wet.

"You're welcome, Mother. You'll have a good nap now, I'll bet."

I arranged for your old companion, who came twice a day,

to bring you milkshakes, and reached the end of my stay.

On the last night I helped you undress. Flat dugs

like antimacassars lay on your chest, your legs

and arms beetle-thin swung from the swollen belly

(the body no more misshapen, no stranger to see,

after all, at the end than at the beloved beginning).

You chose your flowered nightgown as most becoming.

You stood at the dresser, put your teeth away,

washed your face, smoothed on Oil of Olay,

then Avon night cream, then put Vicks in your nose,

then lay on the bed. I sat beside your knees

to say goodbye for a month. "You know I'll call

every Sunday and write a lot. Try to eat well--"

Tears stopped my voice. With a girl's grace you sat up

and, as if you'd done it lifelong, reached out to cup

my face in both your hands, and, as easily

as if you'd said it lifelong, you said, "Don't cry,

don't cry. You'll never know how much I love you."

I kissed you and left, crying. It felt true.

I forgot to tell them that you always sneaked your meat,

you'd bragged, to the man who ate beside you. One night

at home, my heart ringing with what you'd said,

then morning, when the phone rang to say you were dead.

I see your loving look wherever I go.

What is love? Truly, I do not know.

Sometimes, perhaps, instead of a great sea,

it is a narrow stream running urgently

far below ground, held down by rocky layers,

the deeds of mother and father, helpless sooth-sayers

of how our life is to be, weighted by clay,

the dense pressure of thwarted needs, the replay

of old misreadings, by hundreds of feet of soil,

the gifts and wounds of the genes, the short or tall

shape of our possibilities, seeking

and seeking a way to the top, while above, running

and stumbling this way and that on the clueless ground,

another seeker clutches a dowsing-wand,

which bends, then lifts, dips, then straightens, everywhere,

saying to the dowser, it is there, it is not there,

and the untaught dowser believes, does not believe,

and finally simply stands on the ground above,

till a sliver of stream finds a crack and makes its way,

slowly, too slowly, through rock and earth and clay.

Here at my feet I see, after sixty years,

the welling water-to which I add these tears.