What She Needed
The December night she died
she sang all the verses of “Silent Night”
and then told us to go home and leave her alone,
and just like that
she left.
No good-byes, no hugs, no nothing
but that had always been
her solitary way.
Like the rest of us,
she had had precious little control
over the circumstances of her life,
and we always said if it hadn’t been for that feisty streak,
she would never have made it
through all those hard years.
She used to sayto hell with those old men down at the church,
bringing their sack of sardines and spinach, as though
their handouts gave them the right
to pass judgment on her poor soul
and if it wasn’t for us kids, she’d have told them
exactly what she thought.
And then one day, she made a list
of all the things she thought she needed:
some good bread, a little cool water, a small
patch of forget-me-nots,
and the music—
oh, yes! the music!
