Three Poems by Betsy Mars

Hawaiian Sunset

Before the house was turned over to renters,
still strangers, before the renovations,
before the turning over of the key
to the bank – before the trustee took pity
on my daughter and me, and left us
some privacy to say goodbye,
we spent a week with what was left:
a bed, two plates, two knives, two –
you get the idea. In the evenings
we sat in folding chairs and watched
the sun go down over the sea
where my mother’s ashes once eddied.

We said goodbye to the blood-stained carpet,
the puckering paint, the rusting window frames,
to the familiar view. Farewell to the presence
of the man we loved, moved to assisted living.
We even said goodbye to the flying cockroaches
surely skulking nearby, to the flip flop shoes
that we relied on to keep them at bay.
In the distance the volcano loomed, teasing
with inactivity. I learned that week how to let go.

The last morning they came for the bed,
the dresser, all that remained that could be of use,
and we drove away with our memories
packed, boarded the plane. I can’t say
we never looked back.

*

Inside my Mother’s Mind

Inside my mother’s mind there were rooms
her mother had decorated like a carnival
of doom, mirrors etched with venom.

The body that housed her mind was a place
her father had built from conditional love and guilt—
any flaws— imperfect nose, a mole
subject to surgical correction.
Her body ever on display,
staged and scented with perfection.

When my mother spoke there was a guarded space
inside her eyes; sometimes, when I was graced,
she let me see what cowered behind them.

*

Hospital Rest

My father’s breath rasps and bangs.
Wheeled beds bump down the corridor,
code blue over the intercom,
the ins and outs, button-pushing, chart-updating.
Pain on a scale of one through ten?

There is no rest for those of us undrugged.
Caffeine courses through veins in the shift’s eleventh hour,
the pulse so loud at times I can almost hear it
from the sofa bed where my head sorts its way
through the maze of sound, divining urgent from innocent.

The nurse administers morphine—
the word triggers an inner alarm:
images of death throes and agony, then
my father’s unnatural quiet, my stifled sobs.
Instead he settles, breath calmed.

The nurse returns, checks his pulse, turns him on his side.
He faces away from me toward the door.
The morning starts to creep through the dust-free blinds,
thick glass. There is no rush of traffic, no chirp of birds.

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”