Deborah Bacharach
Surely Goodness and Mercy
At mom’s death bed, I ask
the minister for the twenty-third psalm.
I want the King James version
yeah, lo.
I don’t know about faith,
God’s protection. Mom was sort of done
with them too, but I
want to hear the words flicker and glow.
The minister starts:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want I forget the rest of the words.
The minister forgets.
When he forgets, I forget. All my breath
is in Mom’s lungs inching its way
to her heart just one more time. I can’t
reach for my phone shoved in with the crumpled up
parking lot receipts, granola wrappers, hair ties
I towed in and out as if that could
empty the days of drudgery.
The nurse says, The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want. Time flows again. We walk with him
all the way through annointest my head with oil
as he had anointed Mom’s body.
Nurses are not supposed to pray
for your son who has cancer or tell you Jesus
will take away your craving. They are not supposed to
say He restoreth my soul.
I’m tired, really tired
walking alone.
I want someone to go before
me and my mother holding
a rod and staff,
a candle.
Deborah Bacharach is the author of After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has appeared in the journals Vallum, Poetry Ireland Review, Sweet, and Midwest Quarterly, among others, as well as in the anthologies Jump Start: A Northwest Renaissance Anthology (Steel Toe Books, 2009), edited by Lonny Kaneko, Pat Curran, and Susan Landgraf; A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books, 2002), edited by Margarita Donnelly, Beverly McFarland, and Micki Reaman; and Sex and Single Girls (Seal Press, 2000), edited by Lee Damsky. Bacharach is a writing tutor in the Seattle. More online at DeborahBacharach.com
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