APRIL 19: Ann Scowcroft
For L
Our mother describes spires, canals,
red-tiled roofs, snow-capped mountains.
All were visible from the window seat of the aircraft carrier
the nursing home staff just took her up in.
A wrist flick dismisses the ones who stayed behind,
propped up as they were in their mashed potato bodies
while she was seeing for miles and miles.
My sister fidgets in annoyance, grabs a lobe
of our mother’s brain and yanks,
waits for the eye flicker, the guarded surprise,
the eyebrow twitch that indicates a landing.
Soon my sister will swallow back all the worry in the room
Like a bird unfeeding its featherless, helpless young.
Ann Scowcroft is the author of The Truth of Houses, which won the Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Prize in 2011.