Mother    Between Now and the Dark
By Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Those Sisters with Scissors poke holes in you
Cut out tomorrow     dismember yesterday
Tangle your yarn til you don’t know who
                                                               you are or where

You lose the bathroom or it loses you
as if you hadn’t just been there
I show you down my brother’s
                                                 long corridor

past your mother’s final
self-portrait     You wheel
your walker back to me     your daughter
                                           from California

I see me on the potty chair  
you perched on the bathtub chanting 
                                                   “spss  spss  spss  spss”

You sit at table     refuse your juice     refuse
your tuna salad     I hear your voice in my childhood
“Eat a little     drink a little”     “My voice?” you marvel
                                                                       A sudden shift of light

Your gaze lights mine
“I wonder what you’ll write about me now”
For this moment you know me     even here in Indiana

til the Shadow Sisters steal
your face from me     O I regret
the half a continent between us     I regret

I must leave you again     You point
out the window into late autumn
Red leaves flame on the backyard maple
                                    “Look how beautiful”

as if you hadn’t said that minutes ago
A sudden shift of light     and I too
can see the tree     as if

the Mother-Daughter circle     still spins
As if those Scissor Sisters     aren’t forever
                                                          lurking