(c) 3/19/2022
My Great-Aunt Winnie loved the garden.
She labored beside the work crew
that planted crocuses each spring—
in the concrete bowls straddling
the entrance, meant to welcome visitors.
Winnie had no visitors. Not her mother.
Not any of her five brothers. But then,
taking time for family can be such an inconvenience.
More than anything, Winifred loved music.
Whatever musical journey Winnie began back home
her mother shattered
when she had Winnie institutionalized here
among catatonics and their colonic irrigations,
among palliatives, shocks, and needles.
Young and modest, Winnie may not have realized
she had been sterilized.
Access to a turntable took finagling
the one attendant who wasn’t easily agitated.
Even Glen Miller and Gene Autry
become irritating when overplayed.
Winnie was, my father said, a talented pianist.
“She spent her time playing for the inmates
and probably felt fulfilled.”
Sundays after lunch, plunking out
As Time Goes By or Blue Moon
on the auditorium piano.
Capable hands
her mother saw no use for at home.
