Wm Leete

Let me start with a story.

Sorry if it’s boring

Or if you’ve heard this one before me.

 

As the story goes,

Water flows to three stories.

There’s a man standing stranded,

He’s scared and, granted,

He was never handed a plan.

He forced the doors shut,

As he ascends the floors

Before he’s drowned by the flood,

Or maybe he’s saved by a miracle.

This guy’s stuck on his roof, aloof.

The sky spells DOOMSDAY

But he thinks nothing of it.

He thinks he’ll be handed an exit route,

Or some sort of way out.

 

Sure enough, a boat comes about.

The bearded Captain stands in his canoe wearing a white robe

And yells with his mouth cupped, “Do you need help, sir?”

“No,” is all the man replies. “God will save me.”

The Captain looks at him funny, almost in disbelief.

But he just scoffs and rows away.

 

“If religion were a thing that money could buy,

the rich would live and the poor would die.”

 

Fifteen years ago, my mother, too, found herself stranded in the flood.

Within the same month, she was told she’d be having a child and losing her legs

The doctors called it “multiple sclerosis”,

Her disease was fast, ferocious.

 

She never accepted medicine, never hedged her bets,

Instead, she sought to talk it out with “the big guy” and strike a deal.

 

 

“Just you wait, Kiddo,” she said to me. “I’m gonna walk that golden street.”

I watched her layered deceit seep down through her feet

As she swallowed hard to make sure reality never gagged its way up.

She sang, “Hush, little baby, don't you cry,
                    you know your mama was born to fly.”

 

Oh, mother, somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds die,

Birds die over the rainbow, why then, oh why can’t you see

The bleeding of the bluebirds on the brick,

Their blood seeping through the cracks,

Your waxed wings will melt to liquid as soon as you fly.

I can’t just watch you jump from that tower

And fall from the side.

 

But my mother, like Icarus, took her leap of faith.

 

And my father pled and pled

As he watched her move farther from view.

Like Daedalus, his cries were dead,

Endlessly un-listened as if they were never said.

Her legs crept to the edge as she beamed with great solace.

She saw a great golden bridge directly before her.

 

         We all saw it coming.

         She took one step

         And the path gave way.

         And so she fell, smiling all the way down.

 

But there’s the rub: she never made it to the street below.

Five feet from the bottom she hovered,

Just five feet from the bottom in her mind recovered,

Suspended from the grip of reality.

She chose gold, sold on the idea of riches,

And behold, the witches of old came to her rescue,

Holding her crippled body in the arms of angels.

 

I watched her smile while she stared up at that golden bridge

And said “Just you wait, Kiddo, I’ll get there someday.”

 

~~~

 

Fifteen years later, my mother still hovers mid-fall.

She sprinkled her illusions across the wall.

No, my brother, that’s no lowercase “t” at all.

I remember the very last day I saw her standing.

She looked back at her glistening seat,

Decked out with gadgets and wheels.

She looked down to her feet, then up to the skies,

I watched her grin with defiant optimism

As she took a breath, then another,

Knowing this time would be different than the others.

She pushed her spirit forward, growing a smile,

The ground glowed before her,

           

         She never got past denial.

 

And so I watched her body fall to the ground,

Limb by limb, pound by pound,

Her eyes were pointed straight at the skies.

And she cried, but not in loathing,

For in her mind, she was still floating.

And she said nothing, just took in the divinity of the sun.

And I heard a whisper through the deafening silence

A message that reverberated through the eons,

Overpowering the horizons of holiness

And the fields of clover.

“Don’t fear my child,” she said. “All my trials soon be over.”

 

Oh, mother, that’s not what Peter, Paul, and Mary meant.

No holy hand reached down; no angels were sent.

I went down to find your cave of repent

And found nothing but illusions of gold.

Here, I give you my hand to hold, and you push it away.

God has been here all along, but you still close your eyes and pray.

Don’t you get it? He— We have been trying to save you!

The boat was waiting all this time!

Your wax never melted,

In fact, it was never applied.

I watched you dive from that tower

Praying you wouldn’t die!

 

Every night since,

She’s been standing

Level with the skies,

Never understanding

It’s the devil in disguise.

 

         “There grows a tree in paradise,

         the Christians call it the tree of life.”

 

But it’s too late, my mother.

Too late.