Connecting to Mom, My Own, Her Line

    This might be my 200th poem,

    But perhaps there are many more.

    My mom framed one of mine. Four great faces,

    I hope that I still have it somewhere.

    Thanks mom.

    That was special of you.

    Things connect me to you.

    Like, Jonny Carroll. Is that how we spell her name?

    She was the sister of Terry, the step-father that I gained as a sophomore in high school.

    She disappeared from the Indianapolis suburbs, some 25 years ago.

    In my head, recounting it to people at my job this past week, maybe it happened...

    18 years ago. 2008? No, during the mission in Cambodia.

    My mom and Terry went to Phnom Penh in 2000, leaving in 2002.

    They shoed the shoeless, the poor urchins of the dump.

    Lovely photos from a heartbreaking place.

    Poverty.

    She faced it in Togo. Where a medical friend died tragically. We remember him.

    Somewhat anonymous but not forgotten.

    Then Sierra Leone. Where the foundations of my world began.

    Transferred to Bloomington. Where I direct my sports pleasures. And anguishes. 

    Why does it matter?

    Escapes.

    I left Bloomington.

    Three times. 1989. 1992. 1999.

    

    In the last time, for two years, I saw my mom in the hospital.

    It was pleurisy. The nurse asked me if perhaps my mother has screws loose.

    In so many words.

    I reassured her my mom was sane.

    In 2004, in Los Angeles, I told an interviewer about my mom.

    He seemed to use those words against me.

    What? What happened?

    What the haditha.

    Wa haditha.

    Arabic. My son speaks it now.

    Forever linked to the Middle East.

    Turkey, too. The Ottomans and them.

    Wow! Thanks, my daughter! Thanks for reading.

    

    What I write. Before I die. In the now.

    Not later, hopefully when these words, my thoughts, exist decades later.

    Who knows?

    Where did Jonny Carroll go?

    What a mystery.

    Back to mom. Her spouse. Her mission. Her work. Her sicknesses. Her mind.

    As my mom. My friend.

    My daughter. Like me to my mom, when I lived there in the 90s. The 1990s.

    I called and talked to my mom. More than my mission, in far off, far down Chile.

    I remember when my dad's mom died. He cried. She was the maternal grandmother.

    I digress.

    Where was I? Indiana.

    I texted my Indiana friend John yesterday. IU played some magic on the field.

    A man named Cignetti transformed the Hoosier guys, and along with it college football.

    I could talk more of the gridiron.

    

    But that is less about my mom.

    As this poem recounts. Narrates. Rambles. Meanders.

    like the streams of the midwest, or the runs of the east. I pass the Difficult Run daily.

    Going to work. My mom worked in different things. Nurse, collector, seller.

    Like Adolph's screed, sent to to France.

    I read it. And I had shingles back then!

    So I got the shot this week, nearby, on my left shoulder. 

    That made me feel sore, a bit ichy. Even last night.

    After IU and BYU close wins.

    All my life.

    Trick or treat.

    My daughter's friends over. her parents attended IU, married there.

    All the connections.

    Jonny Carroll died not long after my mom.

    In a nursing home.

    Notified to my step-father, some second cousin from Arizona.

    The Cougares, simultaneously as my Hoosiers, beating the Arizona State Wildcats.

    Somehow we are all connected.

    I had other things about my mom.

    What else? Other things. Mothers are kind, mothers are good.

    We love them. My wife, my children's mother.

    Stays close to them.

     Bills and debts, paying to fix the cars. The electical boxes.

    The breaker panel.

    The breaker box.

    Your mother heard the crackling.

    While your sister boiled water.

    What else can I say?

    1000 poems, some on random papers. 

    Perhaps some thrown away.

    Or all bleeding smudged, like in my Army jacket, that I noticed last weekend.

    Working Saturdays and Sundays.

    Did my mom work Saturdays?

    Sometimes. As a nurse, as an antique dealer.

    Me back in Bloomington, parking in the lot by my mom's shop.

    Walking to do some graduate work. Eduard Lehoucq?

    Colombian guy, American type, doing research on Costa Rica.

    Memories and mom.

    Thanks for Saint Louis. 1985.

    1997. Or 1998.

    The Ruby look alike.

    The trips, the drives. 1989 in Montreal.

    Read Hemingway.

    Watched F. Scott Fitzgerald last night. No, the night before.

    Tender is the Night.

    Falling in love with the messed up brain, soul.

    My mom wanted to read.

    I found James Joyce. Worse, or less?

    Hmmmm...

    Never got Fitzgerald to my mom.

    Love.