Earworm

I listen as I sit beside my mother's bed,

which she thinks is a bus, though, unlike me, she is unaware of its final stop.

I sit by this static vehicle and listen 

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

with the yellow rose of Texas. 

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 little round tin inside a sewing box. 

A careless child: I would curl the auburn strand around my fingers, until it eventually disintegrated much like my mother's mind. 

'O'Mally,' she mutters, 'O' Mally.'

 No one in the family  knows this man  but whatever Mae West is doing under her vest is a mystery best left unresolved. 

I almost hold the yellow rose of Texas in my hand, knowing I will be  earwormed by the tune for the rest of the week. 

Joan Bailey