Peter Phillips
Mother's Chair
The nurse is too urgent, too efficient.
She's washing Mother's skin away
and she doesn't have any to spare.
Tired from a sit-down shower,
she sits in her chair.
Mother's good at sitting.
The chair wraps round her, holds
mother in a daze.
She has been asking for me,
and later, when I say I'm going,
she says "thank you."
If there were more words
she would telephone.
Her silent tongue needs
the jolt of a "Goodbye."
This poem is from a sequence entitled Looking For You
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