Climate Change

Was it late in the afternoon on a late fall day,
The falling sharpens winter’s edge,
The matte of clouds a dull cast,
A ship’s rusting hull adrift,
No one willing to take the helm,
Too late to hold the dark back as clouds
Lie down their blind blankets,
Either way the call comes and I answer.

My mother grabbed hold of a passing
Motorized wheelchair and did not let go.
She was yanked from her own non-motorized
chair and thrown to the tile floor
Her head leading the way, leaving
A quarter-sized area of bone exposed
above her right eye. I find myself
driving too fast to the emergency room
in the next town, in the next county,
where I circle the wide parking lot
surrounding the building in search
of the weekend entrance. At the receptionist’s
desk, I’m told that my mother is in out-patient
surgery. I sit in the waiting room reading
Marquez’s, I’m Not Here To Make a Speech.
The ER doctor comes out says it was easy
To stretch the skin on my mother’s forehead
And sew it together to cover the exposed bone.
I guess, better than Botox, wrinkle free
and more permanent. The X-ray revealed
no other skull damage. Does the weather
at the end matter any longer?