Up the Staircase: Thomas Michael McDade

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Call Dreams Kites

My mother’s running away
like she used to do before
she went to the nursing home.
She never got more than a hundred
yards before, but now she’s hurrying
down Cott Hill past the factory
where she worked when I was nine.
She’s heading for the river
in a sky blue dress
like flappers used to wear.
The landscape’s tilting,
jerking and jolting.
I’m near collapse chasing her
but I’m strangely young pounding
down the hill that was my Mount
Everest as a boy.
My mother’s jogging now,
and it strikes me this is the first time
I’ve ever seen her do anything but walk.
As I reach her a sharp pain explodes
in my side because I’ve been elbowed
by my wife who I’ve talked out of sleep.
When I press to find out what she heard,
she moans wait for morning. Suddenly,
being childless bothers me.
Tossing and turning I call dreams kites
braced with bones from family trees
and wonder who will tend the reel for me.

©Thomas Michael McDade

Thomas Michael McDade works as a computer programmer in Meriden, CT. He is married without children or pets, he is a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and has been most recently published in The Binnacle.