Saturday Poetry: What She Saw

Her eyes are in a bored frenzy,

whirring cherries in a slot machine.

The question stalks her

and all her friends with their

advanced degrees

who decided to stay home:

what will I do?

They fasten onto

her daughter, so she can

watch and watch again

as Ruby goes

down

                the

                                slide

for an eternity.

She reminds herself

between trips, that it is her task

to be in this moment, then the next,

even though at first she

didn't want to stay home.

But childcare took too much

of her salary,

and now studies say that

it's better, it truly is better

for her to be here.

But, it was an old woman,

the Ah Ma, who woggled --

their word for Ruby's

bowlegged, sashaying walk --

over to the slide to

reprimand her satin-capped

grandson trying to pry

Ruby's fingers off the bar

and force her

                down

                                                now

before she was ready.

That's what she's screaming:

I'm not ready.

Not ready, not ready.

No.

And the woman, in that instant

of infinitesimal distraction,

framed the grandmother,

who she would very much

like to draw, if she

Could convince the old

woman that she means no harm.

She didn't hear Ruby's

cascading scream

in time to halt her jettisoning

from the banked chute

into the bitter dust

beneath.

What did arrest her gaze

was the nimbus of brown

radiating over to where she stood

as she realized

that her child needed

attention, despite her own grief.