“As Are Right Fit”

Because in her delirium, she raked my beard
with her nails and called me aba, I know
my mother travelled backwards into her death.
Because I leaned over her on the hospital bed
and had the presence of mind not to fear,
at least not then, being near her, I felt
the restlessness of her back-and-forth turning,
as of a body working itself into a narrow
channel or a groove, to rest, that cannot rest.
What she saw, where she was then, I can’t
know—not from the bedrail where I stood
as if they were rails of a stadium, and I, high up,
watched her on a field below. Probably
she was in the Palestine of her childhood,
a location I will not try to imagine here.
She was twice removed from me, not simply
inside herself, but inside in a place before
I could have known her, where her needs,
her concerns had nothing to do with me,
and another middle-aged man with a beard
had leaned over her, leaned in to lift her
as from a crib, before he went off to war.
She’d said a few times that I resemble him
with my thick lips and straight hairline,
the features passed through her. So I go ahead.
I forget all I think I know about time and
become the man who leaned over her once
returned to lean over her again, glad that,
in her delirium, she recognizes me, her father-
son, light brown beard, thick lips, straight
hairline, the creases around eyes and mouth
that are common to joy and grief.