Ruby West

The wind sends fingers of gelid chill down her back
as she makes her slow way bending slightly forward
on her cane. The hardest blusters stop her dead
in her tracks and feeble legs stumble for a second.

This is what remains of Mrs Ruby West the mother
of nineteen children and owner of eighty years.
All the children have left this small town after
the jobs dried up, few denizens remain.

Once in a while I see Mark when I drive into Yakima 

at the Home Depot. He always tells me he is tired

and too busy. He asks how his mother is doing.

'Okay.' I lie and feel ashamed that I do.

Sometimes I stop by her house and check on things.
Mark is my friend and she was always good to me.
We end up talking across her kitchen table as she
drinks coffee and smokes a half pack of filter-less camels.

Her long black hair now a silver stream and her face
wrinkled though the eyes are still strong and bright.
She squishes another cigarette in the clay ashtray

made for her when Mark was in fifth grade.  

The pictures of her sixteen sons and three daughters
line the walls of her dining and living room.

There is not a wall that does not have a dace.

On and on she goes with nineteen stories in intimate detail
and always a mention of the one man she loved.
I ask her if I can get her mail and she says no.
"If the weather gets bad I'll just call one of my boys."

Tomorrow I know she will face that wicked winter wind alone
as nineteen children go about their busy lives far away
and sometimes call, but do not know they are needed.