Living Alone in a Crowded House

The Lark poetry competition

When my mom was eighty-nine she moved to a different world, a Lewy body world of imaginary people who climbed flagpoles in tag teams down on the tawny sands of our lakeshore

in her new world raccoons could fly and an owlish man lived in a nearby hollow tree subsisting on acorns and butternuts and the leafy greens of wakerobin

Mom lived alone, so I visited her daily in her crowded house, which she populated with family members who had predeceased her, along with a completely imaginary little girl who was full of daring and mischief

real or imagined, we were all on the same footing in her house no difference in our appearance whatsoever, and I never knew for sure who was there with the two of us but if Mom started laughing, I knew the little girl was there pranking me in some way

I was honoring a promise I made not to send Mom to a nursing home. But it proved a lively time for all of us, my dad (deceased) sitting in a corner “smoking the devil’s weed” as Mom said and claimed he grew it in a secret garden in a clearing in the swale

Mom wasn’t too happy with Dad. All these years he’d been a straight arrow only to go rogue right at the end. In actual fact, Dad had never tried marijuana always lived beyond reproach, and had died a few years before.

No matter, in this through-the-looking-glass world facts were indifferent reason held no sway and logic disintegrated like a rope of sand

But Mom was happy in her crowded house with her resurrected family and imaginary friends and so glad they’d all moved in with her. And sure enough, the red ball of the sun rose over the lake every morning a dazzle of light that danced on the waters and made my mom hum old songs and laugh and smile and sing.