Your Mother's Last Visit

By Clarence Caddell

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(2022)

Her platelet count and Government allow 
Your mother to be with us for the day. 
The children are excited, straight away 
Become our entertainment, till the show 
Ends in not-unpredicable dismay.

The same elimination strategy:
Against the bad guys in the video game
My eldest manages at last to tame. 
Abashment of the champion-to-be
When he becomes one! ‘Wow!’ we all exclaim.

These meetings in which everybody tries
To just be there! Religion, politics
Are out, with anything that might play tricks 
On the collective humour... The blowflies 
Are my job to dispatch with teatowel flicks.

A glass of wine or two makes us less nervous, 
So that we start to speak of little wants,
Discuss the preferential denouements
Of lesser problems, grouse about slow service
Experienced in fast-food restaurants,

Speed limits, and truck drivers who drive too fast. 
And for the rest, there were those memories
I had no part in, though the least of these
Would live a longer life than I was cast
To live among you once the old girl had passed.

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Clarence Caddell is a poet, and the editor of the forthcoming poetry journal The Borough. His debut collection is The True Gods Attend You.