Mercy

I sat with him,
that mountain of a man

that bear I had followed through the woods.
Don’t be scared. I eat those spiders for breakfast.

Alzheimer’s took his three-piece suit.
His stethoscope. His Lincoln.

Now he sits at this Formica, conquered,
wearing gardening gloves

with gripping circles on them.
White, but greying more each day.

Are your hands cold? I asked.
His glove wiped his runny nose.

His eyes holding all his thoughts
waiting to be picked up like lost luggage.

My name was the first to go.
My brother’s was the last.

In the ambient noise of his presence,
I was not me, but someone.

He looked at me and smiled.
He peered into his coffee,

thickened so he wouldn’t drown.
By now he had one phrase left,

This is the shitz.
And still, when I think of it,

I feel relieved that these
are the words he still had.

Because it was.

*

Coming Home

I sink my feet in the reunion
where salt meets fresh.
One tells the other how she reimagined
granite and earth, slicing stone and root
on her way home,
bringing the mountain with her,
one molecule at a time.

These waters don’t know
our books say they are different.
They know coming home
mother arms stretched
their meeting place remade
by the moon and her song.

The water burbles up to me and I say
yes mother.
I want to find ease in her embrace,
stretch myself into her arms with
the slack muscles of a sleeping newborn.
But I know.
My body knows.

Once the river almost took me back.
She saw my heart and folded herself around me.
Come home, she said.
I saw the water and light dancing
together and I wanted to stay.
I gave myself to the swirl.

I wish I didn’t know a mother
can pull you under as easily
as she can pull you up.

*

Raven Lee (she/her) lives on Wy-East (Mt Hood) where she spends her time writing memoir, essays and poetry, hanging out with trees and throwing funky pots on her pottery wheel. Raven’s writing has appeared in Honeyguide Literary, Amethyst Review and Hip Mama. Raven is on a hiatus from her career as a psychologist and therapist trainer.