On Time

Carol Hamilton

Only once I saw my mother cry:
the stucco house with long drapes
beside the arched-to-the-floor window,
the dark basement where I feared black widows,
the bathtub with its gnarled claw-feet
where daddy-long-legs awaited execution.
But it was dark and cold,
and she was above me talking
to the police. My father sat
in the old black ’34 Chevy
on the town square, patience fraying
in the frigid darkness, my baby brother
well-wrapped beside him.
Champlin Oil Refinery, a flaring night
of anger, my father kicked to the ground
for staying to turn the furnaces off
after the walkout. The same city
and lost again, lost through confusion
but waiting with Horton’s patience,
following instructions through thick
and thin, as my mother might have said,
exactitude his essence.
Our clocks all ticked on time.
But the ambulance took him off
to the wrong hospital later
when he and she were really lost
to each other, the night I did not
see my mother cry. But so many
things had been kicked about by then,
and my story ends in the dark
by the phone, where I never
saw my mother cry again.

Leave a Reply