Mom in the earthquake

Mom in the earthquake

if you only knew

 

what I do

but listen here’s a

 

scrap of paper that might remind you.

I could never run far enough

 

fast enough,

falling on the escalator grate,

 

and she’s almost

always there too late

 

but there to grab me

and catch those bloodied knees

 

I couldn’t avoid.  She lived in Beverly Hills,

working as an extra.

 

With her several agents

looking for work in the movies and game shows

 

at age 70 when the earthquake struck

the church across the street

 

its steeple toppling

she never mentioned it

 

on the phone she later told me she

would have surely fallen out of bed

 

had she owned a bed,

she, sleeping on the floor

 

with nowhere to go,

this the winding down

 

but who knew

her last days in California

 

a place she’d been happy or

free at least

 

dreaming of the long ago

when she was in her model years

 

and about to expatriate herself

to Arabia.