Hand-drawn map of Pawling, New York

After the accident, Mom reconstructed it on a hand-drawn map

on her living room floor, on her oriental rug,

meticulous in her use of 4 x 6 index cards and color photographs.

She was going to have her day in court, she said,

to prove them all wrong.

Anyway, she said, she knew the truth, they were all against her.

 

Mom used toy cars and a truck and set them out on a track drawn by her.

She took pictures of every house along the road, glued them to her hand-drawn map.

She’d made several fact-finding trips downtown to prove them wrong,

studying her views as laid out on the rug.

“I used some of this stuff when I was substitute teaching. For the kids,” she said.

“Now with no car, I’m out of business.  There are lies and then there are photographs.

 

And all I can say is you’ll find the truth is in the photographs.”

She pointed to one house, knew the man residing there, he told her

she was in the wrong and would lose it all and another had said

none of this would hold up but she knew she had her truth laid out on her map,

the evidence she’d reveal to them laid out as if on her own rug.

“They lied of course.  Everybody lies.  I’ll prove them all wrong.”

 

“I’m so distraught.  This letter came from the other side’s insurance company. All kinds of wrong.

They have their witnesses and blame me. I have photographs.

When it happened I looked everywhere. There were no witnesses.  Now they pull the rug

out from under. How terrible it is to lie.”  She had been at the light waiting her

turn to turn right, pulled up even with that truck but he never thought to look away from his map

to see her below him as he started two-handing a clockwise turn.  “I’m fighting the wrong he did,” she said.

 

“At Justice Court I’ll show them what the truth is, all I’ve said.”

Her demonstration of events, her car more beloved than any child, all kinds of wrong.

The sun sends its beaming light that brightens up her hand-drawn map      

and fades the color of her photographs.

That sight doesn’t begin to show her  

brilliant last views, the time you don’t get back, when the pull of the rug     

 

and who is left standing when you feel that rug’s tug,     

and the dread of the lies and the fear of the truth when all is said     

and unfairly done to her.

Must we watch all kinds of wrong      

when the after-the-fact gathering of photographs  

can’t begin to tell the tale on the hand-drawn map.         

 

So sweep it under the rug and wash away the rights or wrongs,

The car gets towed and it’s all been shown in the fading color photographs

as it gets done to her again in court on the hand-drawn map.