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

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