Roller Coaster

It became my Mother's home

on Rapid Creek up the hill

on nine miles of two lane

from where her condo

had been destroyed

by the great flood

down canyons

It had been

lightly flooded

but the old couple

who had lived there

decided to move away

rather than risk another

Mother was brave that way

The house came to me

at the end of her life

as she lay in a bed

at a town home

where nurses

could do little

with her swallow

all wrong and gagging

food and water impossible

to take in at her advanced age

It all was sold to pay the bills

furniture and everything

gone in an auction

and I slept

on the floor

of that house

until two weeks

before it quickly sold

An empty house yields

its darkest secrets

wall cracks

webs

attention

all you movers

there is no one to move

Barry G. Wick