Mother

My friend and I had a cat we called Mother.
I took the couch; my friend got the one bedroom
because he often had sex and needed
that private darkness. I had not yet had sex
of my own volition. No one knew
I had been raped. I was so unknowing
I barely knew it myself, how lost I was
to myself. I was maybe twenty. We loved that cat
that had wandered into our lives, rubbing our legs,
needing love and milk and a safe place
to sleep like any creature arriving on this earth
from God knows where and God knows why.
One hot August day I was sitting outside
when Mother joined me and sat on my lap,
a thing she had never done before.
And that was where she died. I called Jeff,
who had gone to a motel somewhere
with his girl of the moment. “Mother died,”
I said. There was a long silence, then
he whispered quietly, “Oh, no,”
as if he wanted to keep his sorrow to himself.
Many years later I told my actual mother
about the rape. She cried a little and was angry
on my behalf. I was calm. Relieved.
Then life went on, as it does,
without much of a pause. I was not healed
by telling her, I am sorry to say.
I am still not, at seventy-nine. The beautiful gray sky
of a rainy May day, and the lindens
coming into flower. That smell!
You and I both love it. (Did you know
all along I was writing this poem to you?)
Often at night we walk to the river
and stare down into the black current
which has reached flood stage
and carries everything before it.

Jim Moore