(3) From: The Wait, BL Seiber, 1994 Chapter II, The Prize

One AM
I want to stay up the night, reading, writing poetry till dawn. But the woman who bore me, kept me for years, lies two rooms away, facing east if on her left side, west, if on her right, struggling for position in a threatening world. It's inoperable. I want to write her story, but it always comes back his story, or their story. But that is her story. Half a century of suppers and breakfasts, diapers and wet beds, kids gone off God knows where. I want to make poems of the fires she stoked, the water she carried, waiting for a husband gone off to war. But I fear I may disturb her sleep. She worries over my preference for the dark, my preoccupation with what is written. It's not that I resent the intrusion; I feel her presence as she turns in her sleep. I crave the escape and release of words that have everything to do with meaning so real, her bed and her chair are nothing to the dark.


The Wait
She lies in the quiet of her small room, curved spine unmoving, fetal beneath the grey caul of morning. And I take my place in Father's chair at the table, coughing the cigarettes as he did untill Black Lung silenced his hack. I know she's awake in the dark, relearning the emptiness that cancer brings. The solitude of continuance when half one's life is missing. Lost. She's waiting till I get settled in the hour with my smoke and coffee. Accustomed to life alone before I was called to be the caregiver, I'm not always considerate enough to be kind so early. Smoke fills my lungs, famililar, calming. First Father; now her? Chemo alone might not be enough, slight constant weight drops whisper the toll. Steam rises and spits as coffee sputters. The pot needs cleaned again, It's the hard water. The whole house begs for repair. With luck, the worst will wait till spring.


Radiation
How is it watching the present undone? Winter in small rooms. Curtains pulled against the light. Details less noticed in the dim: thinning hair, unbrushed; skirt and sweater, comfortable but coarse, colors never really matching; hands worn rough by radiation, injected weekly. Room to room, uncertain steps and a trail of words. I wish the mail would come. Your brother hasn't called for days, aware that I'm not really listening. I hear her well enough. It's just the repetition: an echo for her jangled nerves. Smoothing tangles of hair, I wonder how it's come to this, and say "It's only a little thin."


May 5 6:15
It's spring and mother hardly knows. Safe behind locked doors, she rarely hears me turn into the drive. Quick naps; the house shut. She's dreaming a childhood of orchards and churchbells, a rail fence and gate in a holler near Harlan, a time before other sons went bad and were caught. I knock loud, unlock the door, keys jangling. "I'm home." She stirs in her chair by the window as I open rooms. "I've not seen a soul," she says. "The phone doesn't ring." "It works both ways," I reply, pouring fresh coffee; as always, my ashtray in place at the table. "I've tomatoes to set out before fixing dinner," I say, changing shoes. "Well, you would," her asnswer. The coffee is strong.