The safest place I know is

a crevice in my frontal lobe

where my mother,

wearing long,

white-tipped nails,

lives.

Once,

when I was five,

on a Saturday before a piano lesson,

she taught me to dip a glazed do-nut

into her milk-cream

cup of coffee.

Ten years back,

before she moved to the lobe,

she lived on a small farm

about a half hour’s drive

from the nest I now call home.

The eve she left,

She was driving a

Ford truck that 

calmed her need 

for a man about the house

since two blondes and a red-head

along with a vicious lymphoma,

had claimed

my father's life.

My gentle mother,

a woman

formerly unaccustomed to pumping her own gas,

had become a gad-about

in her small, red, Ranger.

On the night she passed,

My brother,

The faux-phoenix first-born,

high on speed

and never slowing,

confronted her lights

as she crested the top of the hill.

She was returning from town

sporting her once and only

French manicure.

These days,

most often I remember

the day before

while sitting at my kitchen table

watching me slice cold peaches

and drink black joe

she observed my hands and remarked,

Now honey, what are those nails called?

How pretty!

Think I’ll get some.

scupper(c)3/17/2009