In the IHOP, the song coming over the loudspeaker
is “It’s too Late, Baby,” the last thing I feel like hearing

this morning when worry about you gnaws at me
and I don’t want to think about you as you are now.

A father, mean-spirited and angry, stops
in the parking lot to berate his son, who stands

there shocked, his mouth half open, the father’s face
is ugly with rage, this father taking his son out

for a Sunday morning breakfast and how will they
speak to each other now, the son about to cry,

the father striding ahead? How ugly we can be under
the smooth surface when we think no one is watching.

“It’s too late baby” pours over us and I think of you
telling me you fell again and that you had another

accident yesterday and it took you nearly an hour
to get the wet clothes off and clean ones on.

Remember, I want to say, when we were in our
twenties, our children one and three, living in that

married student apartment we lived in on Rutger’s
campus? You’d go off during the day to study

and teach and at night after dinner and after
the children were in bed, we’d sit together talking

in lamplight, your face turned to mine, your arm
around my shoulders. How safe the world seemed

then, and now, danger everywhere we turn. I want us
back the way we were, not like this, our son so distant

he could be a person I never knew, our daughter not
recovering the way I’d hoped from her divorce,

and you, when I take you to our friends loft in NY city
for brunch and I decide to try the lighter wheelchair

because the others are too heavy to lift and I discover
when I push it, that the wheels want to move

to the right no matter how hard I push, and I have to
make you stand up, though you can’t walk so I can

push the chair over the doorjamb. When I finally get
you into their loft and seated in your chair at the table

I see on our friends’ faces that they are horrified at
how your face moves involuntarily, your arms and

hands unable to be still, your neck moving left, right,
in a circle and they try not to stare, try not to avert

their eyes, but I see the pity in their faces. Later they
help me get you outside and my friend, she is six feet

tall and very strong, says she’ll push the chair, but the
chair veers to the left and you tip forward and I nearly

don’t catch you. We help you into the car, stow the
chair in the trunk, and my friend hugs me extra hard.

I’m sorry, she says, I’m so sorry, and I nearly lean
against her and start to cry, but pat her back instead

Next time we’ll come to see you, she says.