Lovely tender son you are, Stephen.  That moment, her question so careful 
and intense met with your made-to-mother response.  (well writ--p'raps 
needless to say!--esp exquisite drawing of her character, your so-sonlike 
foil)

Judy

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"Nobody does it like a poet."
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 11:50 PM
Subject: Early Snap


This is not really a snap, but sort of a snap, a kind of portrait of the 
other end of life,the place where we are elders begin to fold, the natural 
preface to own. As I have discovered with my mom, there ain't nothing 
natural - or predictable about it!
 Enjoy:

 My Mother, Marianne Moore & Samuel Beckett

 As remains one of my callings, I continue to take care of my 92 year old 
mother on Friday evenings. After my brother, David - who has cooked a nice 
dinner of Swedish meatballs - has taken off for the evening, we continue 
sitting at the kitchen table. Without the sound on, I keep an eye on the 
television and the Celtics/Pistons play-off game. On the table, I have a big 
thick copy of Marianne Moore’s Collected Poems. As most always, unless the 
poems are too sad, she welcomes the opportunity to hear me read aloud. I had 
previously read her Moore’s poem, “The Steeple-Jack”, much to her pleasure. 
It is a favorite poem of mine. I remember first reading it in 1960. It was 
in a small paperback anthology that I took to Paris for my junior year at 
the Sorbonne. It was a cloudy, almost raining day; I was standing still on 
the sidewalk in a line of students waiting to get into the University 
restaurant for lunch. A perfect weather for the gray, seaside New England 
village in the poem
 – including the tangible clarity of the details of the Church and ocean. I 
read the first stanza of the poem and ask her what she thinks about it. 
Though I can no longer stir her to write an intentional poem, she clearly 
becomes attentive when she can get engaged with the words in someone else’s 
poem, especially when the structure is formally tight:

 Durer would have seen a reason for living
     in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
 to look at: with sweet sea air coming into your house
 in a fine day, from water etched
     with waves as formal as the scales
 on a fish.

 “It’s kind of exotic, don’t you think?” She astonishes me. My mother is 
possessed of a righteous, empirical bias not dissimilar to Marianne Moore’s 
sense of imaginative precision about sight and place, particularly the 
places of her poems in a New England world. And here is my mother -  I think 
quite rightly in this stanza -  pointing out that Moore has created and 
given the poem an ‘exotic’ tableau - Durer and the whales, those ‘etched’ 
waves. It’s as if my mother is reprimanding Moore; the poet is making the 
envelope too pretty - that the situation should be presented in a much more 
severe manner. Yes, my mother - descendant of New England ship-builders - is 
implying, politely enough, that this New England poet should watch her 
manners and not make pretty where pretty won’t do. "Don’t hedge on the 
harsh" is credo.

 My mother announces that she wants to go to bed. I am happy about that. I 
can see the rest of the basketball game, which is a good, well fought one! I 
put her under her covers, apply her eye drops, and wish her a goodnight.
 “I enjoyed this evening very much,” she tells me.
 “You liked the poems?”
 “I do, very much.”
 “I like them, too.”  I go to the back “family room” to watch the rest of 
the game. It’s over at nine. I turn off the Television. “Help me. Would 
somebody help me?” I hear her voice on the house intercom system. I rush to 
the bedroom. I turn on the light. She is gripping the handrail on her bed as 
if she desperately needs to get out.
 “Someone needs to take care of my family. They are all out.” Her eyes are 
wide open, agitated.
 “We’re fine, Mom. Not to worry. It’s time to go to sleep.” She lets her 
head fall back on the pillow, but looks at me intently.
 “Well, what are you doing with your life?”
 “I am a poet, an artist, a photographer, a maker of books.”
 “That’s all well and good but tell me why are you gaining ten pounds 
everyday. It does not look good.”
 I am embarrassed. I have gained weight.
 “I am working on loosing it, Mom.”
 “Well, won’t you?”
 “Yes, Mom. Now it’s time to go to sleep. Can you close your eyes and 
pretend you are a bird flying high in the sky going off to a special place 
full of dreams??”
 She closes her eyes and does not answer. I shut off the light and go back 
to hear an analysis of the Celtics defeat of the Pistons. Before I turn on 
the television, I hear her voice again. “Help me. Will someone help me?”
 I go back. I don’t turn on her light. I see her face framed by angle of the 
hall light. Relieved, I think, to see me, her brown eyes rise like intense 
marbles. She does seem frightened. She looks at me in a way that I know she 
is about to ask a carefully considered question, as well as expect me to 
provide an adequate answer. In a perfectly firm voice,  she asks, “Can you 
tell me the implications of all of this?”
 It’s as if she has been lying on a platform looking up into some ultimate, 
infinite darkness - one that each of us, no doubt, will inevitably face or 
confront.
 “Can you tell me the implications of all of this?”
 Samuel Beckett would have loved a question like this.
 I don’t know what to say. I do not know what to say to a person who is on 
the final edge, but still so firmly in the world.
 “Try to close your eyes and dream, Mom. Pretend that you are a whale and 
that you are going way down into the darkest depths of the ocean. And think 
of all the pretty fish that you will see!”
 She closes her eyes and I leave the room quickly.

 Stephen Vincent
 http://stephenvincent.net/blog/