MY MOTHER, IF SHE HAD WON FREE DANCE LESSONS by Cornelius Eddy.

Would she have been a person with a completely different outlook on life?
There are times when I visit her and find her settled on a chair in our dilapidated house.
The neighborhood crazy lady, doing what the neighborhood crazy lady is supposed to do, which is absolutely nothing.

And I wonder as we talk our sympathetic talk, abandoned in easy dialogue, I, the son of the crazy lady, Who crosses easily into her point of view.
As if yawning or taking off an overcoat. Each time I visit I walk back into our lives.

And I wonder, like any child who wakes up one day to find themselves abandoned in a world larger than their bad dreams, I wonder as I see my mother sitting there, landed to the right-hand window in the living room, pausing from time to time in the endless loop of our dialogue. To peek for rascals through the Venetian blinds,

I wonder a small thought. I walk back into our lives.
Given the opportunity, how would she have danced? Would it have been as easily As we talk to each other now, the crazy lady and the crazy lady’s son,
As if we were old friends from opposite coast picking up the thread of a long conversation,
Or two ballroom dancers who only know One step?
What would have changed if the phone had rung like a suitor, if the invitation had arrived in the mail like Jesus, extending a hand?????