which she thinks is a bus, though, unlike me, she is unaware of its final stop.
I sit by this static vehicle
as she dredges broken fragments
from a seabed of confusion.
Her index finger keeping time like a metronome.
Tick tock.
Tick tock.
To and fro.
To and fro.
Tick tock.
She's been like this all afternoon
addressing the blank wall,
ignoring visitors.
Her rhythmical babble full of strange surprises:
'Under the Zion Methodist
Under the jelly belly
Milly Molly Mandy.
As Mae West goes under her vest
Onion jelly.
Under the Zion Baptist
Zane O' Mally.
At the gay call centre,
the yellow rose of Texas
is under a lilac sky.
Oh Rachel! Oh Rachel!' she cries.
Rachel, the grandmother she never met.
Rachel, who took her daughters to Australia
from where they would return,
leaving her bones interred in the dry earth beneath the thirsty Queensland sky.
I remember the lock of Rachel's hair,
which I found in a small round tin.
A careless child, I would curl the auburn strands around my fingers, till they disintegrated like my mother's mind.
'O'Mally,' she mutters, 'O' Mally.'
No one in the family knows who he is and whatever Mae West is doing under her vest, we leave to the imagination.
In my hands, I almost hold the yellow rose of Texas knowing I will be earwormed by the tune for the rest of the week.
Joan Bailey
