POETRY: My Mother's Body To Wires, To Tubes

MY MOTHER’S BODY TO WIRES, TO TUBES
By Marianne Boruch

My mother’s body to wires, to tubes
and their liquid, days she turned toward me
or away, winter but so much sun
from car to door. I followed it past nurses

at their station talking movies, who’s good
in one and not the other. Gown tied
at the back and neck, she slept beside
a window. I wedged my chair there, reading,

looking up, reading — who knows what
I read — her legs bruised, thin, arms battered
by the doctor’s needle. Her face — can I
say this plainly now? There was light

as she grew less. She drifted to it.
I’m not hungry, not religious, I’m in a spot,
she told me one afternoon then
closed her eyes to that radiance again.

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LOVE So many of us face this situation: a loved one in a medical “spot,” with a dire prognosis. It is good to be reminded that sunlight intruding into the fluorescent glare of a hospital room can be a blessing. It is good to witness the fact that even as people seem diminished by the medical array of machines and tubes, we find light in their voices and faces. It is love — unmentioned in this poem but undeniably present — that recalls us to hope, and reminds us that our lives have meaning.
Kathleen Norris