Tag: caretaking

Caretaking by Alicia Lee

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Caretaking

what do you do when your ex-husband has surgery?
you wake up at 5:00 AM to shuttle him, calm him
come back and smile as the anesthesia still clings to his words
settle him in his recliner, fetch the meds at the pharmacy
buy food, orange juice, stool softener

then notice the kitchen is “bachelor” clean, so
go to work wiping, sweeping, putting the clutter of condiments
into the empty fridge

hand wash the large, yellow bowl
with paintings of grapes that I had bought years ago,
when we still ate together
and entertained, serving salad from this bowl
now clean and storing onions on his shelf
next to the crock pot

so many items that remind me of when our life was
entangled, a picture of our son, the lamp
that used to be next to our bed
the mismatched fork that belonged to a full set,
a wedding gift from my uncle

he teases me between gratitudes
insists that I like giving him a hard time
picking on him while he’s down
but I am grateful too
tonight we eat at the same table
all the strange moments
led to this peace

*

Alicia Lee began writing poetry back in the late 1900’s. She graduated from The Evergreen State College with a major in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Impetus, Slightly West, 4th St. and Nocturnal Lyric.

Three Poems by Nancy Huggett

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Wake Me in a Silly Stupid Way
(our daughter’s request, post-stroke, most mornings)

My husband is a pirate,
a patch, a breach of laughter
in the morning. Stealing
our daughter’s memory
of what she’s lost
from her waking eyes
so what remains is this ocean
of love that amuses. He steers
the stolen ship of what might have been
around the rocks, through shark-infested
waters that roil when her brain recoils
at sound and wobbly stairs and boundaries
not set by her—the flash and flare
of fists that harm the ones she loves,
the contrition that plunders her days.
He peg-legs in and pulls a parrot
from his pocket, feathers ruffed
from the climb upstairs, squawking
in some raucous rum-punched tenor,
jigging with the sunlight as it streaks
across the pine planks of her bedroom floor.
Other days he’s a wizard in a pointy hat
or a jester with a bell, or his own sweet
grinning goofy self that he magics
from yesterday’s debacle or last
night’s unkempt sleep. He saves her
daily from her own laments.
Switch-baits regrets for buried
treasure—this day and all its charms.

*

When our daughter with Down syndrome is diagnosed
with a rare neurodegenerative disease, I think of the skunk
after Maggie Smith

who, three nights in a row,
woke us with the burning sulphureous sting
of a stink and I ran around closing windows.
Like all those midnight runs to the ER
when our daughter kept having “fainting spells”
and turned blue. Then someone told me

it takes almost two weeks for a skunk
to refill their glands after spraying,
that if it happens back to back to back
you’re dealing with a bigger problem.

*

I Believe in the Night: A Caregiver’s Credo
(lines from Rilke, Book of Monastic Life I, 11)

I believe in the night, creator
of mirrors and monsters,

and in the stars, dead now
but dangling direction.

I believe in shadow’s
embrace. Dusky lover

of all the nations of my heart—
their bicker of sadness,

canticles of delight. I believe
in unfinished hems, threads

trailing through dark,
thin ribbons of fiddle

for fingers searching,
rosaries lost long ago

in the backwoods of hope
where brambles catch

starlight, glimmer like fireflies
always moving. I believe

in the dirt, in cicadas’
vast slumber,

the emergence of lovers,
bulbs, dew worms inching

refuse into friable loam.
I believe in the soil—

that darkness can make you sing.

*

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Published in Event, Poetry Northwest, SWIMM, and Whale Road Review, she’s won some awards (RBC PEN Canada 2024 New Voices Award) and a gazillion rejections. She keeps writing.

Two Poems by David B. Prather

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Caring for Someone Who Won’t Care for Themselves

My parents drop by again today,
and when I say today, I mean to put you in my frame
of mind, this moment. My father
              doesn’t even come into the house.
It’s the middle of summer. It’s morning,
and it’s already ninety degrees.
              He sits in the breezeway
while my mother opens the kitchen door
and enters. She’s just had her hair cut,
but she tugs on a few strands that were missed.
I get the scissors and clip the strays.
Have you ever trimmed your mother’s hair?
I foresee a time when this will be a weekly show
of affection, which will then become washing
              and toweling and brushing
every day. Putting her purse on the counter,
the one I bought her for Christmas,
she tells me my father still won’t take care of himself
the way he should. And when he’s my father, I know,
              and I’m sure you understand,
my mother is frustrated with him.
She wants him to live as long as possible.
I’ve begun to think of the world without my father.
I can’t say when the clock in my brain started
that countdown. Are you the kind of person
              who wakes before the alarm?
I have a habit of tapping the snooze button,
sleeping through those warnings.
I don’t want to imagine the worst, but I am unable to stop.
My mother says he’s troublesome, that he ignores
his own heart, the way it beats like a trapped bird.
How is your heart these days? Mine is a mourning dove.
              Mine calls out under the threat of rain.

*

When my mother asks why

I spend the entire day in bed,
I tell her I’m a dog who’s lost
his master, my paws stretched

across the grave, unmoved
when called by name, unresponsive
to that come-home whistle.

I tell her I am a tree fallen
in the forest, heartwood rotted out,
food for the parasites that brought me down.

I tell her the blankets are too heavy,
made of an element so dense
they drag me down

to the center of the earth.
I tell her the air is so oppressive, a giant
pressing down on my body, this body

I don’t even know anymore.
I tell her I want to be done
with this life, but I don’t want to be done,

but I do, then I don’t, and I do, I don’t.
I tell her I don’t know anyone
who wouldn’t want a day alone

under the covers with their dreams
tangled up in the sheets.
I tell her I’m adrift on a raft

over the deepest trench in the ocean,
and all around me is only horizon,
the line that divides one life from another.

*

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023), and the forthcoming Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com