Room With View

Outside
no sky, just
the tarmac, sheds, a
low wall, and the bank,
the green bank where before the
weather got cold I used to see deer. Pale
sunshine comes and goes; brief
showers stir the puddles. I remember trying to
climb a hill like that and getting a hand up from a
woman dressed not like me in slacks and sneakers but in
a dress and heels. earrings, long necklace; she grasped
my hand and I was up like a pillow. I thanked, she
nodded and was on her way, leaving me stunned and
marveling.
Will all the rest of my life be lived
vicariously through windows? If I owned a
nursing home I would organize walks - canes for all and red umbrellas,
sturdy companions, stops at Bagel Nosh or Starbuck's. And I would have
a
gang of grandsons and granddaughters swirling around, getting underfoot,
scaring the help and making us laugh but never knocking us down. Then
the
windows would divert us with memory, not wist. Okay, there it is,
the view: tarmac, two sheds, a low wall, the
green hill. One shed has a
wise-ass face, the other sits there, square. with no
personality. A thrush runs up the gable side
after winged food, another pecks around in the
puddles. The square shed reminds of buildings in parks that
hold toilets. Yes, walks with canes and also
singing; I don't know why it's so hard to convince these people
that we need to sing. Every time a few of us are together
just waiting around, someone will start singing and
there we all ago, Clementine, Coming Round the Mountain, we
just keep going until someone comes along with
some "activity." But now I sit alone looking across at my
postcard-covered bulletin board - three pictures of Kali there. I
invoke her daily but so far without effect. Couldn't we have an
earthquake? Sick as I am I'm well enough to help
carry sicker ones. Then at last I'd have
something to do.

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