Blame

 I am not too surprised when our oldest 

      let a wound

on her 43-year-old foot fester 

      for two months until it sagged 

to a blue mush, 
      

      until that leg was chiseled

down to half today.

Now I can’t decide whom to blame

for this latest catastrophe.  

She wasn’t dealt a good hand at birth

     my husband always said 

about her disability—this mind 

     that can’t count change,

and trusts too easily.

But I was the one who let her leave

     the board and care home to live 

with the boyfriend. 

Still, how much blame is mine when

      she kept running away

      to him anyway?

I can’t blame the boyfriend either.

     He does all the laundry, all the shopping,

all the cooking 

despite being legally blind

      and on dialysis. 

Blame isn’t black or white.

      It bleeds across a spectrum,

in pale grays and starchy whites,

      and bruised blues 

      like a rainbow.

Blame leads to talking to yourself

     and feeling stuck 

and wondering if things had gone

     better for her 

if my husband hadn’t died.

But blame is also myth-making.

     And offers second chances, ways to build

one more version

      of the past.

My mother-in-law's orchid

 Stepping out mornings into my sunny garden

a different kind of time unfolds.

Coffee mug in one hand, I turn on the hose

with the other. 

Cool water showers the herbs and I hear 

a quiet applause rise

in me for their perseverance—

those deer did not return.

I pinch buds from the basil and the scent

bursts like green confetti into

my nose and move on

to my mother-in-law’s orchid.

It’s lived 13 years without her now —

Lived with her a decade before that

neglected by her and now by me 

who neglected both.

And yet it endures. 

Like her, it keeps on giving.

I’ve pruned my guilt about it but 

it grows back like her orchid’s improbable 

blooms, a sweet gift and a silent 

rebuke.

Back in the kitchen,

the basil’s scent won’t let go.

Each time I brush hair from my eyes,

a wave of green spice fills 

me up and quiets the sting 

of that regret and of children 

who take too long to call.

But when they do, it’s not the basil’s calm

but the sudden, soaring thrill I feel

when seeing that orchid bloom again.

The language of light

The sewing needle I thread to fix

my boy’s belt loop 

drops from my fingers and 

vanishes

into the beige bathroom rug, 

impossible to find until 

I flick on the ceiling lamp and

instantly 

a silver streak lights up that needle 

like a stage spotlight.

I have learned that light consists 

of tiny photons, each one racing off

in every direction

forever

and each one holds a record 

of where it’s been, like a  postcard stamped

with the return address of a star or a moon

or a ceiling lamp

that my eyes read in a language 

I don’t know I know

and suddenly—needle…. there.

A miracle the universe sends

messages all the time, telling me

Look, this is what’s here, 

this is what’s real,

this is what you belong to.

The real miracle though isn’t the light

but that there’s a me

to surmise the wink on the floor.