The old woman
you see peering out of the basement window
is my mother.
She is waiting for Rusty the little dog
who sometimes wanders in
from the street outside.
It doesn't matter if Rusty comes or not.
what matters is the wait that
often extends to the dusk when it slowly joins
the fading shadows on the street.

At midnight Mother suddenly wakes
to chase away the cats fighting under her bed.
The noise disappears before she's up.
Slowly she comes to realize
she is in a small basement room,
not in her wide open village home
where stray dogs, cats, mice
and her own family had equal rights.

Over eighty, she naturally has many
problems, feels her self-respect diminishing.
She struggles not to feel useless.

The other day when I quietly
entered her room
she sat with her eyes closed
and her little book opened in her lap.
Perhaps she was pondering the couplets
of the Ninth Guru she had just read:
worldly relations are all Maya,
creation is but a bubble that rises and bursts
Rama is gone, Ravana gone,
nothing is permanent.
Union with Him is the truth,
the only truth . . .

Her face was aglow
as if a revelation struck.
A smile of confidence parted her lips.

The noise of my steps disturbs her.
She opens her eyes and immediately
looks at me.
Her face with great poise gives into a
mother's face.
The first thing she asks me if I had
enough sleep last night.
She still worries my habit of reading too much.

Then a flood of complaints:
Everyone is so indifferent here,
no one to talk with, children have no time,
TV all English . . .
this year she must go back to Punjab
to see if everything is all right
with our home, she must . . .
But none of the complaints makes it
to her lips.
Her forehead becomes tense, her eyes
struggle to hide wetness.

Slowly she starts talking again
about the woman next door
who is older, wiser,
and who also waits for
little Rusty wandering in the street outside.