clara in the cave

It’s not pretty, the arguing
with a mother in a silver wheelchair.

Stalactites hang from the underside of a desert floor
piercing through cool moist air
daughter
pants and pushes her up the incline
thinks the brakes are on, but not
mother
proclaiming independence
I don’t need you
and frees herself from the chair
and runs, literally runs, up the ramp.

Unimpressive, she says
not like the gleaming white cavern in Virginia
with the pipe organ built into the formations, that summer, back then.

Mother and daughter enter the throne room
twenty-foot-long straws, undulating ribbons, a soaring mythical column
hundreds of thousands of years
of drips, minerals, wetness
secret treasure
awe and wonder wash over them.

As they leave, indignance and independence release their grip.
The rush of desert air brings them back to reality
that they are two women
with the same turn on their noses
the same ache in their left hip
and the mother’s momentary bristling
at the difference
between old and young
is buried,
she can’t talk of resentment
that she can’t do some things
that it’s not her turn anymore.

she looks into the eyes of the daughter she loves
eyes that are like his, her husbands eyes, long gone
and she knows it’s ok to be 80
and be a mother
standing in the parking lot
of Karchner Caverns
in the hot desert air.