What was she to do
when the life came back
into her foot and leg,
and her arm remained a thing
that slipped down into
the wheelchair-what
but lift it out
with her well hand,
and flop it back
into her lap over
and over? Each visit
while we talked,
she carried on her wordless
conversation, patting it
and showing it how to bend
and bend, then holding it
to her breast, poor
retarded baby. Poor Mother,
prostrated in blouses
bought for the trip
she never got to take,
pulling the fingers up
from the eggless nest
of that palm, and staring
at it, just as she did
the night her arm
suddenly moved—
floated, wobbling
up into the light,
dangling the hand like
seaweed from the depths
of its strange sleep.
And then, above the shining
chrome bars of the bed,
it paused to turn
its wrist, until
we saw the miracle
was not the arm, but she
who held it there,
and spoke only to herself
in her small voice
about the mysterious power
she’d found to raise
it up, asking again
and again, “What do you
know about that?”
The Revival
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