The Healing Game

 

The Walmart dracaena is losing its leaves, the soil is too wet, compacted,
she will find a more generous pot, set its roots free,
help it stand again.

If it was spring and if there was space behind this townhouse,
she’d be putting plants in the ground.

When she drove out to Alberta in the fall
she made a point of taking her sowing machine and scraps of material.
While she waits, she builds a quilt.

There is a drive in her to mend things, change things,
hem the curtains, make this basement bedroom look roomier, create
the illusion of space for a living room.

She has attacked the aging carpets with steam,
the floors and fixtures and worry with vinegar.

Today she is painting walls a brighter shade of yellow,
sometimes it takes three coats for her to be satisfied.

Soon there will be paintings, framed photographs, she will find them,
she knows where to look, knows how to blend colours, how to
soften walls with images.

Goodwill is her zendo, her place for gathering ideas and furniture and fittings.

In the laundry room, off the bedroom, she has created a kitchen.

In the evening, beside the closet that doubles as sewing room, she reads,
rests, on her steam-cleaned Goodwill chaise lounge in our living room.

Morning, through the glass patio doors still frozen to their metal sliders, 
she watches a blush of red under the taut gray-flag sky, and remembers
a Van Morrison song, called, Fire In the Belly:

gotta get through January, gotta get through February,
gotta get through January, gotta get through February.

On that same album there is a song called, Healing Game:
Sing it out loud, sing it in your name, sing the healing game,

sing the healing game,
sing the healing game.

There is a fire in her to see something grow, a hunger
to see something stand again, green and tall, full of sap and flowering,

while she caretakes, while she waits,
endless months for her son to rise, to stand,
to see a sunrise.