This poem, “Bothersome”, is another in my series of poems on memory loss. It is also posted on Substack, where I have a small following and where I am posting a Wednesday poem and blog about my experience supporting my mom through this all-to-common type of memory loss.

Because of this, I think, this poem does not quite resonate with me as much as many of my poems do. This usually happens for me much down the line, where I see the poem in the context of so many others while reviewing my catalog.

I am not sure what that lack of resonance is from. I think it is because my voice here is conflicted–I sometimes speak in my mom’s voice and sometimes in mine, but it isn’t exactly clear which voice that is.

I could argue that this was intentional or least a subconscious decision based upon my experience writing poetry.

It wasn’t.

It was me struggling to write a poem about something very personal and about which it is hard to formulate metaphor and lyricism, for some reason.

At least this time.

I prefer, usually, to have my poems sit on the line between personal and universal. Certainly it is possible for a poem to be both and probably that is always the goal.

There are several personal notes here that I think work well. The line “are you in Pittsburgh?” is the most notable of these. For the past several weekends my mom has called and after she apologizes for calling, she asks me, “Are you in Pittsburgh?”

To which I usually say, “Nope! I’m at home” or sometimes New Hope or Maine or Amherst or Seattle or Colorado.

For some reason my mom has Pittsburgh in her head, along with the idea that I won’t be able to talk to her if I am.

I think she is just hoping that I’ll answer but almost sure I won’t, because I might be in Pittsburgh.

This is actually pretty funny and my mom can joke about it with me. Or at least she is amused when I inevitably say, “You know, Mom, I can take your calls anywhere I am.”

“You can? Oh, okay.”

Okay is her default answer when she agrees but is still very confused about something.

A personal side of this poem which it is impossible, I think, to infer, is that the offer to have something to drink or a place to sit or a way to sit is a mix of my voice and my mom’s.

I’m not sure why, but my mom often offers things to me, such as a cup of coffee or a coke or a cookie or a plastic Halloween cup that she’s been offering to me for a week now.

I should just take the cup, and the cup of coffee, and the cookie.

There is not a time, though, where I bring a snack to my mom of some type that she doesn’t say, “Well, why don’t you take that home for yourself?”

And I say, “Mom, I bought this for you. And I can go and get whatever I want, which you can’t.”

“Oh, okay,” she’ll say.

And another confusing point in the poem, which I think is context understandable, is the stanza where I write, “I imagine a different call,/I am so sorry/ to bother you,/ but I just wanted to call.”

The first line is me, the narrator, speaking while the next lines are my mom.

It would be better to use punctuation of some sort to distinguish this, but I wanted the moment to feel ambiguous.

And that, I think, is because I recognize so much of myself in how my mom behaves. Not entirely, not the memory loss parts, but the parts of accommodation and deferment to someone.

Maybe that is clear here. Maybe not.

That’s every poem I write, resonant or not, a vulnerable attempt to be clear but an instinct to obfuscate, toward ambiguity.

And all poems are ultimately separate from me, my story sure but also an offering to the body of poetry, which holds with the style of a poet but is also detached from them.

You can see a poem as the window to a poet’s soul, but a poem is more a window to your own reality, a way for a reader to pause and contemplate a different perspective, to view reality, to experience life.

On another note–my book is progressing slowly, its progress fighting my joy of being outdoors right now, working on our yard, tearing down one of our decks, preparing to build a shed and writer’s nook.

It will be here soon. I have no deadline, just confidence that I am but moments away from the momentum that will see me to publishing.