Poem 35

I started this poem based on houses in older neighborhoods in Spokane and Bellingham as well as my experiences growing up around retired people. Belonging to a church when, whatever I believe now, gave me many opportunities to connect with older people and watch them age and sometimes deteriorate (sometimes die less-expectedly). It was originally just a poem about the houses themselves until I noticed a sign for an assisted living community a few weeks back. I like the idea of assisted living (I think we all need more "assistance") but wanted to show how resistant to losing independence I think most of us are.
Many of these details come directly from my grandmother's experience, but, as usual, the poem is not autobiographical. "A person" is a phrase I've heard people in her generation use to refer to themselves. I like it

Assisted Living

The old houses know how to wait.
Their rattling,
thin windows, driveway cracks
listen to the fidgeting leaves
and sprinklers wetting
close-mowed lawns.
Men with veins,
calluses, and bent nails
prune shrubs and patch concrete.
The old men, the old women
fight with dirt, with sag
and rain.
Shaking fingers smooth quilts
and store away plates.
Routines blossom in these times:
a closed linen closet at 3,
a microwave hum at 6.
a daughter’s tired child at 8.
With arms and legs borrowed
from ancestors, the grandparents
wind down like music boxes,
keeping up with vitamins,
physical therapy.
They line up prescription bottles
and do alright for themselves,
even when a husband passes away.

But when the houses get too large
and the beige grass
overpowers the green,
and the grandson hauls
old firewood from the porch,
a person has to call someone
to put away towels
and seed the iced walk to the garage
with carefully de-iced steps.
The walk to the bathroom
begins to wind like a trail
and the basement,
it may as well be China
because she can’t get there.
Her phone grows legs and arms,
strong from bank account meals,
to shovel, haul, and clean.
A person even moves the phone
next to her chair in the living room
so she doesn’t have to go far
when it rings.
And after she changes the channel
when a commercial about
assisted living comes on during the news,
she can call her grandson
to ask what his girlfriend does for a living.

At the edge of town
on curved suburb drives
complexes beckon
with elevator song and the smell
of meals without microwave trays.
A knock at the door brings
bathing and linen services,
and community gardens
don’t cry out for weeding.
Their shuttle buses,
decaled with “Manor”, “Village,”
“Retreat” run daily to malls
and doctors’ offices.
But a person can still drive
and she has a daughter
who can get to the store.
It will be a few years
before she sits by the window
and looks four floors down
and three miles West
to the house where she planted irises
and took the basement stairs
two at a time, carrying
home-canned peaches
for a grandchild’s desert.