mother

she's a crazy lady who doesn't talk to neighbors;
fears gossip like the plague; goes to work, says nothing,
& saves it for family & explodes on them
like a computer virus with monstrous data dumps.

her lightning storms make you count off one-thousands
until thunder & mercifully, silence...for now;
under a bed, her children confront reality:
she's not omniscient - she's that crazy lady,

subject of neighbor's scornful observations,
representing invisible opposition, she is distant
as she slips into her car before sunrise, comes home
with afternoon breeze, almost never has visitors;

lives with a cat called Lucky that she walks like a dog
too quick to corner, felinely retreating behind closed doors,
keeps to herself and likes it that way, she and the cat
careful, mistrusting, letting in only a lucky few.

but if you were her child, or her brother in Ohio,
you'd know that she was one semester short of
a college degree, which was a big deal for a woman
just after the bomb and a little before Woodstock,

she wasn't idealistic, stuck between baby booms
like her children, scratching away days with
word games & solitaire, love of her life waiting
in heaven for her, trying to align the numbers

hoping to win a lottery prize large enough
to keep all those promises to herself, her children,
her cat & the few who overcame convention &
rumors to discover this woman in full.

(c)Tom S. Prunier                    2008

published in Skipping Stones Vol VI

Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA