Stewart Florsheim

1.
In mother’s room the breathing machine doesn’t stop.
Listening to it I try to learn a lesson about
love. I’ll use it as long as it works—
her concession to me because she would like to be done
with it, the three-month prognosis an eternity to her.
When mother was about to give birth to me
the doctor was late so the nurse yelled at her
to stop pushing and keep her legs together.
Now I imagine being in that half-state—
mother ready to release me: a room of first breaths.

2.
When they pick up the machine mother apologizes to me.
She wonders if she is disappointing me by not fighting,
the disease so rampant she can barely move. When I try
to feed her she reminds me of the times she fed me,
each spoonful of oatmeal for a different member of the family.
She says they were so worried the time I stopped eating. 
In Germany they would have pinched my nose to force
my mouth open.  That’s what they did to my uncle Norman.
So why didn't you eat, she asks. Was life so bad? It's dusk
and the room is quiet when she pushes away my arm.

seems oblivious stopping every so often
to lick the wound, her world suddenly a tripod,

her sense of balance redefined but unquestioned.
When she stops she looks up at us for

encouragement, her tail wagging but not
in the usual happy way—it is curled behind her

like a comma, a pause before she lifts her front leg
and places it onto the next ascending step.