My mother's thwarted our plan,
  absconded from the hospital, hitched
  a ride back to the house

she can't live in anymore. I tear across the desert,
  the yellow speeding ticket
  I got outside Yuma flapping

in the cool wind that smells of clean sheets
  on the line. The Saguaros begin in tandem
  with the raindrops. I'm not as broken

as I've been the other times I've made this drive.
  In a few hours, we'll stand in a semicircle
  in her living room

because there's no place to sit among the collections
  of angels, stacks of newspaper and dust.
  And we'll take turns

telling her why she has to go to St. Mark's now,
  that she needs help. The list of her ailments
  is long. I won't recite them here.

But I'll tell you about the yellow cactus flowers
  in her overgrown front yard, and the tender way
  her brother kneels in her yard to pull

the weeds away from the pansies, while we make
  our heartfelt pleas, how the sky breaks
  into violet shards like the carnival

glass vase my grandmother bought at a roadside
  antique shop outside San Antonio.
  And yes, I was whipped

for dropping it, but that's an old wound,
  and there are older ones underneath it.
  The family that nearly perished

in a house fire in 1957 is breathing now,
  the charged air of a summer lightning storm.
  I could tell you we all have the same disease,

how we can't let go of the old junk, but I'd rather say:
  these purpling clouds, the cold, clean
  forgiveness of a hard rain.