Some days she lives
in neighborhoods where
she can't get lost:

at the corner house
she finds her aunt and cousins,
 
then at Fine Point –
No, (she makes the correction)
Pine Point ,
all her summer friends live
on a mound of sand
(she means, the beachfront).
 
And off the country road
there is what she calls
the homestead . She'd been there
visiting she thought, out all day,
enjoying Spring , the wrong season.
She says the trees along the way were
a full-leafed canopy to pass under.
 
Sometimes though, a question
escapes when she opens
the refrigerator, empty
of everything but doubt,
 
or when she surveys faces
in the living room – someone
in the wing chair --and who
are those two on the couch?
 
Where is everyone? --
the people she knew --
when she couldn't get lost.
 
In nine decades she has found
her way to lost. She says, I
haven't seen my mother
or my father in so long.
I don't know why,
don't know what's going on.
When I call to say I'll visit
she says: Do you know
where I am now?
I'm not in the old place.
 
It isn't Spring at all
when this is happening --
the harvest is coming in --
the flower shops have
chrysanthemum. The temperature
dips lower overnight.
Wheels of Queen Anne's Lace
dry up, turn inward
into tight brown nests.