This is from Sharon Olds’ most recent collection. Most of my readers know of my fondness for the celebrated Berkeley poet who writes the body so beautifully. And this rings right on the worries that happen around an ageing parent.
The Ecstatic
On her first antidepressant, my mother
is adorable. Like many of us, she’s not
interested in much except for herself, but these days
she’s more happily interested
in herself. Now I think of those years with her
as the Middle Ages, before morphine.
We could have put something in her food!
like a Rose Fairy Book potion. Yes, I
wanted her to put me first, I wanted
to draw out
Leviathan
with an hook. But I sensed the one under
the one under the spell — this one,
the child who was in there to be tinkered down to.
She’s had her fitting for the MedicAlert,
“I’ve got it on, I’m all dingus’d up,
I knew you would want to know that I’m all
hooked up!” She is happy that I want to know,
and proud of wearing a little transmitter — not
unlike being an opera singer –
a link to those who wish her pleasure and long
life. Oh I have my mother on a leash.
Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth?
When the morning stars sang together?
I was there with my mother.