Mock Orange

My mother comes in the front door.
That smell is too much, she says, nodding
toward the mock orange.
Those little white flowers are pretty,
but the bush smells too ripe, don’t you think?
Maybe you should cut it back.
It smells like those locust trees in New York
near the hospital-so sweet
they’d take over your senses, cross the line.

I tell her I dreamed of Jeff last night.
I don’t like to think about dreams.
I push them away, try to forget everything bad
like when Jeff insisted on telling me about…you know.
She looks out the window.
I told him I knew but didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want my friends to feel sorry for me.
I went to the beauty shop when he was sick.
and played bridge with my ladies.
And honey, when you write poems about him,
you don’t say what he died of, do you?

Linda Goodman Robiner