No Excuse

I know what I did wrong. I can’t
blame the wine. Drinking too much
wine is part of what I did wrong.

My flaws and mistakes are interlocking,

like the rhyme in terza rima,
which I should be using to illustrate
my meaning. Another obvious error.

And so I confess I filled my glass
twice at least as we played cards,
a game I was quietly winning even as

I ignored the outcome. No words
express my sorrow as my mother fades
away, sometimes turning her cards

up or down when a rule slides
inaccessible into a pocket of her brain.
I wish we’d find her hearing aids

in a pocket of her purse. Her own pain
is unfathomable. What does she know?
She feels useless, down the drain,

down in the dumps some days, slow
to get up in the morning, asleep
on the couch afternoons. Let’s go

back to the old days, keep
what memories we can intact
by repeating them, pull her back from the deep

abyss. But a poem cannot act
as a net, and here the meter is random.
There’s no excuse for the poem I abandon.

— Babs