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POETRY

Terminal Lucidity

Seeing her son as father,
her daughter as mother,
she launched into a long
convoluted lecture, censors
short-circuiting at age 97,
the repressed returning,
feelings swallowed, words
choked back since age 7
making a grand entrance
from a hospice bed:

Stop fighting about money,
about whom gets what. For
the love of God, what do you
care more about: your house
or your child, your car or your
child, your furniture or your
child, your pots, pans and
silverware or your child,
your nest egg or your child?

As dementia has a way of
cutting through red tape,
truth has a way of slipping
through cracks of delusion,
questions about scruples
from moms 97 going on 7
have a way of seizing hearts.

For the love of God, who are
we: vultures driven by hunger,
or sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters driven
by love?

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Todd Matson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in North Carolina, United States. His poetry has been published in The Journal for Pastoral Care and Counseling, Feminine Collective, Salvation South, Agape Review and Clayjar Review. He has also written lyrics for songs recorded by several contemporary Christian music artists.

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Image: Sculptor Nina Niss-Goldman by Aleksandr Ibragimov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.