Visitation
by Michael Waters
聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 Dorothy Waters, 1927鈥�2022
No visitors. Covid. I haven鈥檛 seen my mother in months,
But stand now on a grassy hump
Outside the locked-down memory care facility
Where she鈥檚 been propped in the window of her room,
Grotesquely lipsticked, thinning hair
Unbrushed, askew. I wave. How we adapt.
August dusk鈥攖he reddening sky my backdrop.
And what does my mother see? Her reflection, then me,
The son she bore seventy years ago,
As we merge once more.
Shimmering in glass, I鈥檓 within her, without.
I smile, not wanting to startle, to shout,
But it鈥檚 the double whammy of her skull
With its horrible rictus grin
Peering through translucent skin
That鈥檚 staring back, wanting in.
I鈥檇 thought I was done writing about my mother鈥檚 dementia when I completed the 25-poem sequence, 鈥渕other of flames,鈥� included in Caw(BOA Editions, 2020), but since then a few more poems have insisted themselves. 鈥淰isitation鈥� arrived post-Covid and after my mother鈥檚 death. The title might also suggest a haunting, experienced first by my mother, then later by me. I鈥檓 not sure if the poem serves as memento mori or as exorcism.
has published fourteen books of poetry, most recently Sinnerman, Caw, and The Dean of Discipline. Pagan Sky: New & Selected Poems聽 2000-2025 is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2026. The Bicycle and the Soul:聽 Prose on Poetry appeared from Tiger Bark Press in 2024. He has co-edited聽 several anthologies, including Fruits of the Earth: Harvest Poems (Knopf, 2025),听 Border Lines: Poems of Migration, Reel Verse: Poems 91社区 the Movies,听 Contemporary American Poetry, and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from聽 Homer to Ali. His poems have appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, The Kenyon聽 Review, and Rolling Stone. Waters is the recipient of five Pushcart Prizes and聽 fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts,听 Fulbright Foundation, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He lives without a cell phone in Ocean, New Jersey.