Poetry By Rufus Wright

Paul Sableman CC



She Really Doesn’t Try to Make Things Difficult

At 61 hardly anyone is easy
picking a birthday present.
When asked, her frame of reference
ignores subtlety;
she hipshoots answers like “a new body”
or “anything you want to give me that I want”.

She weaves together lunchtime talk
of missing Mom and wishing Mom
had taught her how to paint
as good as Mom.

So when she sees inside the gift box
everything an artist-to-be wants to be
able to engage,
her look asks, “Am I good enough?”

Her nervous gaze stone-skips across
watercolors, brushes, pencils, sharpener, eraser,
sketch pad, then lets her up
as if for air.

“I can draw and I can paint til I get good,
then I can sell to Sherwin-Williams.”
With finality that’s no surprise, she shuts the box,
clips its clasps, pats it once and misses Mom.
​



What the Map Left Out

she came home and immediately
was celebrated by both the nuclear
and the extended parts of our
not tense on purpose but that way anyway
family

celebrated as the Most Beautiful Baby

and then and in spite of the fame
and almost as immediately she got sick
from to me a word of many syllables
with meaning I couldn’t grasp except
that everybody’s faces and hidden eyes

declared it was the Most Bad Thing

grandfolks and aunts could not get close
to sensible explanation, would not let me know
specialness my sister had that took her
back to where I guessed she’d come from
hiding I scrunched behind the sofa

listened to our Most Unhappy Parents

they whispered that her brain was infected
because the protecting things had failed 
and all the ok parts lacked the cables
to connect them all together
all I knew was I

heard a Most Impossible Change was waiting

and all I imagined was a fold up road map
with no lines joining towns and cities
​