POEMS ABOUT MUM

For my mother’s 100th Birthday

There was an old girl from Nantucket
(and nothing much rhymes with Nantucket).
She’s our mother, we love her
and it’s great to discover
she shows no signs of kicking the bucket.

Being Showered

She’s often longed
for a man to undress her
but she imagined
a slow unraveling
a sensuous unwinding
unbuttoning, unhooking.

She longed for a silky slipping
a passionate ripping and tugging
a clumsy rumpling.

Instead
there’s this yanking and pulling
this pushing and shoving
this bending and puffing
this cutting of her chin
and squeezing of her ears;
this embarrassing
elastic snapping
journey to nakedness

which is not for lust
or any sort of embrace
just the taste
of Baby Shampoo
and Sunlight Soap
as he cleans her
sees her
in all her
wrinkled glory.

But maybe her old body
needs to surrender itself
to the only caresses
that these days
she’s ever likely to get.

Death Row

My mother sleeps in the room
at the end of the row.

Her bed is comfortable
and familiar.

At dawn she sees the sun rising,
the staff arriving.

But who will be awake
when they finally take her?

Will anyone rattle their bars
as she passes?

(I’ve read that staff and residents
sometimes line the corridor:
form a guard of honor
in a gesture of respect.)

I hope that I am present
at the end of her sentence.

My Mother is Watching the Tennis

My one hundred year old mother
is watching the tennis.

She can’t identify the players:
their names are unfamiliar
and hard to pronounce.

She can’t read the scores
at the bottom of the screen
or read who’s at  “Ad” or “Set Point”

The colours of the players’ outfits
don’t help:  
they are both wearing pink.

The commentators speak
too quickly
and the crowd is shouting.

The ball is too small to see;
the white lines jiggle
against a sea of blue.

She determines  the state of play
through the thwack of balls,
the grunts and the cheers.

My mother
can hardly see
but she is watching the tennis.

Querulous

Today
after visiting my mother
I Googled the word
“querulous”.

The synonyms were:

critical
complaining
difficult
carping
fussy
negative
censorious
hard to please

And I decided
that yes,
querulous
is what
my mother was
today.

The Aged Care Fairy

The Aged Care Fairy
waved her wand
over my mother’s house
and reduced it to
one room with one bed
and one chair.

The Aged Care Fairy
waved her wand
over my mother’s garden
and reduced it to
sunlight under the blind,
a pot plant on the windowsill.

The Aged Care Fairy
waved her wand
over my mother
and reduced her to
a woman in a bed in a room
with sunlight under the blind
and a pot plant on the windowsill.

Floral

Before my mother died
I had no interest in flowers.

My mother wore floral frocks -
I called them her Cabbage Dresses.

She sewed curtains
that were green with golden blooms.

She chose greeting cards
with roses and chrysanthemums.

She painted daisies
in pottery jugs.

She preferred flowery bedspreads
and placemats and tablecloths.

I’ve always worn
plain fabrics or stripes;

decorated my houses
with abstract art;

chosen greeting cards
with cartoon humour;

filled my vases
with dried thistles.

At my mother’s funeral
I consented to
a bouquet of pale roses.

Now

I buy daffodils and lilies
and tulips.

I notice spring blossoms;
revel in the scent of jasmine.

Van Gogh’s irises
make me cry

and I write poems
about flowers.