Distance from Loved Ones__James Tate

Distance from Loved Ones


After her husband died, Zita decided to get the face-lift she had
always wanted. Half-way through the operation her blood pressure
started to drop, and they had to stop. When Zita tried to fasten
her seat-belt for her sad drive home, she threw out her shoulder.
Back at the hospital the doctor examined her and found cancer run
rampant throughout her shoulder and arm and elsewhere. Radiation
followed. And, now, Zita just sits there in her beauty parlor, bald,
crying and crying.

My mother tells me all this on the phone, and I say: Mother,
who is Zita?

And my mother says, I am Zita. All my life I have been Zita,
bald and crying. And you, my son, who should have known me
best, thought I was nothing but your mother.

But, Mother, I say, I am dying . . .


(This is the title poem from James Tate's book Distance from Loved Ones, published in 1990 by Wesleyan University Press). He has taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and is a Pulitzer Prize recipient among other honors. His most recent collection of poems is The Ghost Soldiers from Ecco books, 2008). I came across the poem today in a thrift store in Silverlake. A fortunate transaction.


.