Termites Eat

Morgan tapped his fingers on a jar of woman’s bones.
Yes, yes, easy as termite hunger in a wooden railing
it was, as she dropped from a high porch, head hits
cement wrong, and life falls quiet. Mother’s dead.
History embeds its ends. Crazy how he could kick
a field goal with her now, with the right kind of vase,
or bowl a strike, the kind of fun things they never did
because in all the constant yakking of the universe,
Mom always squawked mean as a caged parrot
someone set on fire, desperate for your attention,
hoping to fly free, wanting to bite your finger off.
“I guess, in her long speech, she said her piece,”
thought Morgan. “I don’t know what she meant.”
He couldn’t help but think she proved Original Sin.
Yes, in time, she had thrown her sentence in. Quick.
Inarticulate. Brusque. Opposite of conversations
that somehow take flight. She spoke heavy
as a handyman who carries cans of paint
to a backyard fence only to find no need
for another coat. There were parties. Fear.
Rushing about. Morgan pumped distance
in each room she entered. Invented space.
Surprised the crack of her skull came naturally
as vacuum cleaning! Next, any hopefulness
pooled in most of us just flat ran out. She was
a woman who drank too much, complained
bitterly to her children about their lack of religion
and became a motel clerk when the waitressing
destroyed her legs, rivered blue in varicose veins.
“Mom would be on the graveyard shift tonight, if
it weren’t for those damn bugs,” Morgan mused.
If they were people, he’d have a lawsuit going,
maybe a criminal case. No, wait, these insects
always win, he thought. They eat everything up.
She never saw his Dodge. He kept her last note
to him, with a $50 check to spend in Vegas
on his next trip. Washed away her blood
with the garden hose, then hung it back.
Organized a funeral like buying a new car.
Tonight, he’ll sneak onto the golf course,
pour her ashes in the same trap as Dad,
talk to her one more time, wait and listen
for a cancer-cured voice to declare
what’s wrong with him and all of this.
Crazy joy of a buried sound. Pedal. Road.
He notices the trees don’t meet overhead,
as the moon bales light onto the Intrepid.