As it passes her unheard, mother spins time onto a stick, tents it as she walks. She calls from here and there, tests, questions. And as she walks her stick’s a feeler, with which she probes and peers.
        How quickly she forgets it all, always repeating and repeating: how, when, where? The present flows through her like absence. All she recalls harks back to childhood and on to the parts to come. She speaks of it to us, the same anew.
        When she climbs the stairs, behind her time spins an invisible carpet. At every step she asks: “You down there? Are you down there?”
        No one. Nothing.