We bring our guitars to her room.
She's delighted and asks,
When did you learn to play guitar?
even though I've had one
since high school. She repeats
this question over and over
and over, and it becomes hard
to resist the temptation to answer,
In jail. When I was riding the rails
during the Depression. Guitar?
What do you mean? What guitar?
The music gives us something
to do, but my repertoire is limited,
consisting mainly of blues songs
about leaving, jumping in the river,
putting your head on the tracks,
being down and out and depressed,
subjects that might not be the best
for a suicidal woman with dementia.
I also know some Hank Williams,
but I don't think, I'm so lonesome
I could die, or I'll never get out
of this world alive, is any better,
although Why don't you love me
like you used to do seems appropriate.
My brother strums a familiar rhythm,
my mother begins clapping her hands,
and he starts singing Folsom Prison Blues.
I give him a look to ask, What the hell
are you doing? but she doesn't connect
her prison with that prison.
When she hears he shot a man
in Reno just to watch him die,
she stops moving. Her face puckers.
That's not very nice, she says.
No, we agree, it's not very nice.
People can be mean, she says,
and starts to cry. Yes, we say,
then I begin playing a Beatles tune
one of the early, peppy ones;
she smiles, taps her feet, and asks,
When did you learn to play guitar?
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joe Mills has published two volumes
of poetry Somewhere During the Spin Cycle and Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers. His third collection, Love and
Other Collisions, will be released in March, 2010.
| In my next volume, I have several poems that deal with my mother's increasing dementia. It's a tricky subject because it's easy to sound either sentimental or callous. Originally this was a much longer poem in which I let some of its sections spin out like the verses of a folk song, but the more I tightened it, the more I felt it improved. |
