Witness

Dad called and said, “Your mother
has fallen down the stairs”

and in the next moments I kept
waiting, listening,

for at any of these moments
she might be dead

but the men were in the house,
lifting her onto a gurney,

speaking to her. I could hear
them in the background,

and my father had forgotten
the phone in his hand,

I was getting my information
from the ambulance men,

and then when my father returned
I said I would be right out.

I left work, it was maybe ten,
and the rest of the day was hospital.

Satan doesn’t tempt Job
so much as God. In essence, “Sure,

do what you will, but do not harm
him.” So Satan takes everything

away from Job, and lets him suffer.
The friends may say, “Curse God and die,”

but Job persists in loving God.
The fall broke my mother’s pelvis

and six ribs, but she healed;
the bones, though porous, mended.

Her memory is shattered,
but the blessing is not remembering

the fall, not being aware
in awful moments that shame

is at hand, that death or grief are near.
My father, the witness, survives

alone to tell us.
And am I a Judas, conferring

with the health professionals
to provide appropriate care, when all

he wants is to live alone with her
in their house, while snow

gets into the attic, mice into the cupboards,
while food begins to mold

in the fridge and breadbox, as lights
go out in the vaulted ceiling

of the great room where he sits
beside a curved lamp to read his book?

— Babs