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I used to call mother once a week,
and we’d chat over things,
my brothers, my sisters, the neighbors,
the rising sun, the lawn that needs mowing,
weeds that need pulling, and the gutters,
gutters that have stopped behaving like gutters,
bullied by the rotted leaves, and dirt,
even the pines can’t hold their needles,
and her whole yard is misbehaving,
the whole planet is conspiring,
conspiring to keep things from being the same,
nothing wants to sit still,
nothing is as it was,
not even the simple task of taking out the garbage
is as it was,
like twisted, gnarled thickets of rhododendron,
if rhododendron could take out the garbage,
this is how mother gets it out to the street,
so the garbage man started putting it back beside the house,
sometimes we’d talk about the Dollar Store,
or some hand towels for the kitchen,
a slice of ham from a roadside store,
some milk, she’d make a pot of coffee in the morning,
and have a cup with a bowl of Cheerios,
reheating the coffee the next day till it is gone,
and now I call her every day,
I call her everyday because the whole planet is conspiring,
conspiring to keep things from being the same,
nothing wants to sit still,
nothing is as it was.
