Mother, I looked for you

I look for you while ice skating
on the frozen ponds.
I look for you when the boy next door tells me the lone
shoe, frozen in the middle of the water,
half in half out, belonged to a child,
a girl, my age,
who fell into the muck, got stuck, and died.
I see her in my dreams, 
her small face floating up to the surface, smiling at me,
begging me to rescue her.

I look for you in the Belltown pharmacy
where you stand at the counter, whispering
Is my prescription ready? 
And the children from school steal penny packages
Of Bazooka Bubble Gum.

In the car wash, where we laugh at the crashing soapy water 
as it bangs against the windshield.
Music crackling from the radio,
a news report from 1963
about a dead president.

I look for you in the swamp land behind our house,
between the cat tails,
and the skunk cabbage.
I look for you among the wild carrots,
the streams running ragged into the woods.

On the hill behind the Civil Defense
where we sit with our bottles of Coca Cola,
you hold buttercups under my chin 
to find the golden light there, 
tell me I must like butter.

I look for you when I pass the Catholic Church
with the giant crucifix outside.
I think about Jesus’s hair
how you said it was a bit on the limp side
and we both agreed, it was all so obscene,
that little loin cloth barely
hiding his privates.

I look for you inside the Howard Johnson’s
where you sit in my station and 
order a Grasshopper and then change your mind 
and order a Pink Squirrel.

At the bar
the one you took me to
when I was home from college for the winter break,
red hearts for Valentine’s Day,
caught in the big snow storm,
really love your peaches
wanna shake your tree 
on the radio 
as you flirted with the guy sitting near us
and offer him a threesome.

Inside every psychiatric hospital
and prison, I look for you.
I apply for grants just so I might find you—
Mattewan Prison for the Criminally Insane,
Mid-Orange Correctional Facility
Payne Whitney Psychiatric Hospital
New York Hospital
Bellevue Hospital
Columbia-Presbyterian.

Mother, I looked for you
inside every writing class I ever taught.
Thinking, surely you would be there,
ready to write your memoir, at last.

Mother, I saw your long-dead brother in the eyes of a student,
So, I married him.

I look for you in the faces of my granddaughters
relieved that you are not hiding in their eyes.

I looked for you in the old house
when your husband, my father, 
lay on the couch, dying.
I went through the cupboards and the drawers,
the photographs, the letters, 
sure I would find you.
Father, hard of hearing,
and I was yelling and he said he heard your voice,
your ghost was in the house, right there.

And I said, no, it’s not your wife.
Not my mother, not a ghost.
It’s me.

Mother, yesterday I turned seventy-two,
just a year before your age when you died.
I looked in the mirror, 
And there, at last, I found you.