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Rachel Hadas reads
 Connie's Room
in Real Audio format.
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On what may be the last
Visit, I, my husband, and our son
Watch television
In mother-in-law’s, mom’s, and grandma’s room.
An hour-long talk show features two
Teenage boys who shot their violent father
And urge us Keep your family together.
Her wheelchair oriented to the screen,
She does not speak. At noon
We exit to the realm of sun and air
And lobster rolls. Goodbye until next year.
Goodbye too to the sense that seasons fly,
That golden summers quickly fade and die.
A morning in a place that time forgot
Cancels all bustle out:
Speedy is trumped by slow.
Pay enough attention; events do
Seem to rhyme: hot flashes
Offset by deathly coolness (the cat’s ashes
Scattered). After a dull day, meteors
Streak the silent sky with promised showers.
How could I have been tempted to complain
Life was humdrum? Blackberries in rain
Gleaming; dawn spiderwebs begemmed by dew.
Time’s passage has a rhythm, if you know
Where it hides. Today we’ve lost our place.
Even the way home fades without a trace.
We are en route, and think we’re headed back.
Asking directions doesn’t do the trick:
We keep on getting lost,
though not so lost as Connie in her room,
paddling through countless shallow waves of time.
Count them. A hundred and seventy-four thousand hours.
One thousand forty weeks. Twenty years.

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