Predictors

    by Patricia Wallace Jones

She gives his history objectively

enough to impress the clinically bent

with her gleaned ability to impart the facts —

scales and scores that, even considering

standard deviation, sink below acceptable.

They lower their heads and speak softly

of referrals, never addressing

what she knew early —

that the numbers they use to label men

will never measure a mother's fear,

predict the day she'll be too slow

to break his fall, too old to tie his shoes.

© 2002  Patricia Wallace Jones

+ Previously published in the Avatar Review, Summer 2002

Patricia Wallace Jones is a life-long artist who began writing poetry after retiring as Co-Director of Missouri’s federally funded Parent Training Center (for parents of children with disabilities) and a move from the Midwest to the northern California coast.  Her art can be found in local shows and private collections and her poems and/or art have appeared in The Avatar Review, Lily, Centrifugal Eye , Lucid Rhythms, The Guardian, 14 by 14, The Chimaera, The Flea, Wordgathering, The Shit Creek Review,Autumn Sky, "Touch: The Journal of Healing," and other online journals.