I would have brought you helium balloons
If the miles across the snow-swallowed mountains
weren’t so long and slippery, my big little son.
Joseph, your minute of birth did not go unremembered.

I can’t phone you or write you - you would not know.
Probably you think I have forgotten you, but I never will.
If a magical giant stork could just bring you
to a place near me, I would put on my tire chains.

Solemn child always slender and frail,
Joseph Isaac I named you to be a laughing boy.
You feel a different kind of chains now, don’t you,
as you push against the padded bed rail.

They won’t let you have your rattles any more.
The only joy you ever knew is deemed sociably
unacceptable. You can’t even eat; fed by a tube -
birthday cake can’t be stuffed down that slender stalk.

My son Jo-Jo on the white sheet lies.
Your nineteenth birthday probably went unnoticed
except by me. My heart can never forget my
Jo-Jo with big suspicious eyes.

Why, when your pilgrimage took you
to live where it costs nearly
five thousand dollars a month,
did they make you into a nudist?

I was embarrassed for you, bringing
your sisters to visit, before we had to move away.
I had to go in first to cover you, but the smell
was still there to greet us. And your piercing eyes.

You never lay naked before the family at home.
You never lay alone either, except at night.
You always had our laughter circling around you,
until your illness grew too large for us.

Beautiful dark haired son, I can still see you helplessly
yanking at the curtains closed against the sun;
your own filth lying cold against your bareness.
They call you the crabby one!

Pretty child, now made huge and fat, tucked
between the old folks as this year has
taken you farther from love and home.
They had to put you in with a deaf man,

you frighten people so with your fierce screaming;
with your angry eyes and tonsils showing,
kicking your helpless legs and flailing
small useless fingers against your fate.

Jo-Jo, still from the next state I love you,
great pimply son, I know your heart yet.
If only I could continue to cuddle you, my baby,
in the rocking chair we always shared at home.

The only thing you enjoy, cannot be mailed,
but if I only could have been there,
I would have brought you helium balloons.