It is September 4, 2021
and I’ve decided that
I’m taking a break today.
I’m at Riverview Campground
and I’m missing my mom.
This is the hardest hitting day
because the memories are Little Jason’s;
our mother wasn’t perfect…
but she had graceful, beautiful,
quiet, unrecorded moments,
which are all I am remembering today…
1 day after what would have been their 39th anniversary.
At times, our mother seemed psychic.
She begged me not to take Jamie to the theater
to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show;
she told me that something terrible was happening
and though Jamie never forgave me,
I knew that our mother believed what she was saying
and I broke my promise and left Jamie at home…
Later, Paul (who I had seen Rocky with the previous year)
called to say that he had been raped across the street from Oz.
She knew. Somehow she knew.
And she knew about Katie.
And she knew about other things…
Back in my memories and
my mother is looking out
across the low green field,
storm rolling in toward our backyard –
I’m a small boy child,
clinging to her mysterious silence,
her wary hypnotized gaze is exhilarating
in its graceful stillness…
The emerald sky sparks
and forms tear drops
over Janet Lynn forest
years before that tragic coupling
will leave me forever scarred
and always haunted;
a dark harbinger of things to come.
Could she see all of that then?
I’ve never imagined that she could…
but who is to say what stirred within her?
“The shameful secret she never shared.”
Written by Jason Wright
September 4, 2021
For Myra Canell
