February, or in Lent, Lazarus
 

Mother holds her breath
and tries to watch
Boy out of the corner
of her winter-worn eye—she’s looking for
early warning white-out signs—the kind she’s missed in other
years—hair
not cut the usual length; showers skipped, difficulty waking up—
almost as much as going to sleep,

an extra poke
in her back,
a harder shove,
slower to get home, slower to leave.
He misses school—
a day here, two days there: no question but that he’s ill.
By the time his face has lost all color and his skin goes
cold it’s too late. She tells Boy, in her Cheerful Voice,

"Just a few more weeks until Spring
Break—can you make it till then?" "Seventeen
school days," he replies without inflection, "and after
that forty before summer.
And next year? And the year after that?"

Mother focuses on little
miracles: another small
resurrection
after a turn in the tomb,
looks at her feet,
which, caught
up in long
strips of the unraveling kitchen rug, can only move ahead one
short step at a time.  

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Wendy Vardaman, Madison, WI, has a Ph.D. in English from University of Pennsylvania. Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in various journals, including Poet Lore, Poemeleon, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy, qarrtsiluni, Free Verse, Pivot, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Women’s Review of Books and Portland Review. She also has work forthcoming in the anthologies Riffing On Strings (Scriblerus Press) and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press).
E-mail: wvardaman at hotmail dot com  

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