California Shimmer (for LS)

At three a.m. Hawaiian time,
an arm lifted up very slowly
over your mother’s pillow,
the sight of which
caused the hair on my head
to very quickly stand,
even as the arm dropped
and a body tilted upright,
leaned away from me
and stood next to the bed.
She was back,
though not in the form
she had occupied
since departing
this bedroom three years ago
for the east coast.
it was a simulation
of some kind,
I knew that because
I couldn’t smell her,
you know, that aroma Italiano
she wore, not really inviting,
more like bug spray,
for a time before bug
was, sadly, no longer
a term of endearment;
a rather ambivalent citrus, actually,
as contrasted with
what you wore that morning
at Oak Bluffs, when mom,
supposedly sleeping in,
caught wind of it upstairs
and was suddenly in the living room
exclaiming over and over
how intoxicating your scent,
remember that?
But if it wasn’t really your mother
at three a.m island time,
then who or what was it?
Some kind of apparition,
perhaps the same ephemera
they used to pump
the Didion garage sale
in the Times: that California shimmer...
and so as Thanksgiving approaches
I shall give thanks that I have the bed
to myself these days,
most of the time, anyway...