THE DAY GIVEN

Breakfast finished, I ask mom what she wants
for lunch. She assumes this is only out of duty,
a carousel without music, but it’s reverence
of habit: of last-minute runs for onions, rice,
or flour, emptying then filling the dishwasher,
Lieder of the still-living. “I’ll do that,”
I coo, when she reaches for bone
china cups, tips to lift the gallon
watering can that tilts on backyard rocks.

I’m not paralyzed, you know

is the snap back. Odd that usefulness
is always grounded in manifold chores,
never art. The winter desert is sunless
by 5:30 dinner. She forgets the Yahrzeit
candle for my father dead sixty years,
replays instead the childhood story
of the barn’s limestone basement
where she milked the cow, while the greedy
pig tried to bite her, and her mother flung
the bent-toothed rasp at the rats.