The cuckoo has laid its eggs
in my (mother’s) brain. It found
the cerebrum a spongy roost,
an almost natural habitat and now,
flying the coop, expects me to
take care of the babies. I
consult a field guide. Learn
the cuckoo is a strange relative of
the roadrunner, its song a series
of hollow-sounding calls, at times
reminiscent of the bellows of church
organs, or so a German clockmaker
thought. My mother rises at midnight
—the babies, she warns me,
won’t stop crying. She hides her hairbrush
under the sink and reads aloud
from the toaster instruction manual.
At 4am, kettle on for tea, hands
over her ears, she dances off-kilter,
croons Love Me Tender,
wakes me from a dream where
I’m stuck in a clock, poking
my head out on the hour then
getting dragged back in.
Sarah B. Wiseman is a pan poet, carpenter, stilt-walker, community grief-tender, art-maker and nature-lover. The poem Cuckoo is part of a series about her mother’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease. Another poem from this series is forthcoming as a video-poem in Synkroniciti Magazine in September.
