Her Creed
By Sharon Olds

I believe
in the creation of
the criminal,
the evil people,
my mother says on her eighty-third birthday,
everyone born is a miracle.
How did I know I would have YOU, she
cries out. "I don't know what I would have done
without you, Mom," I say. "I'd still
be out there, calling MA-ma, MA-ma!"
She laughs, with a delight that lies near
the center of her nature, now, near the start
of the end of her life. But she's worried about cloning--
"When they clone you, Mom," I tell her,
"I want one." I'll put you on the list, she says.
"I want the little kind, that I can
put in a high chair and feed Cream of Wheat to,"
I add, and she says, I'll move your name
up high on the list. Over and over,
these days, she tells me they never will be able
to make real flesh, in a dish-- not flesh
with spirit. She tells me this once an hour--
my mother is going gaga so slowly
she makes it look like a natural return
to a state of grace. Not real flesh,
she assures me-- the men cannot make happen
what happened in her body. When she dies, she wants to see
her father again, and put her arms
around her beloved husband. Not a living
cell with a soul. Oh-- but Science,
she sighs, you know-- 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea!" Let's come back
and check on them," I propose. "On your birthday,
in the year 3000, I'll pick you up,
wherever you are, from wherever I am,
and we'll visit the earth." What will you be driving?
she asks, "Maybe I'll be riding on the back
of a snow goose," I tell my mother.
"I'll honk." Shave and a haircut, she says.
They will never make flesh.