Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Chain Stitching

There’s the drip like a waterfall
And the sigh of her breathing
And the light of my screen 
And this loss.

The loss I can’t name,
But it’s something like dawn when I try,
Like flowing honey and morning and sky.

The loss is like sunlight,
Its rays the embrace of a friend,
Like the chain of an afghan
On a cool summer night:
Breeze metered by yarn, metered by breeze.

And it creeps through my heart by degrees,
Like ivy is climbing and spreading, and 
Soon it’s all you can see.

One night I was violently ill.
She brought me clean sheets,
Laid cold wash cloths on my feverish face;
It’s all I can think of here in this place.

I’m sitting awake, 
Waiting her needs,
But she’s sleeping softly,
Retreating from me.

I retrace the steps of my childhood
Among the dripping and—
I don’t hear her breathing—
There it is, so soft, and a snore.

I retrace the steps of my childhood,
Trying to find 
A place or a time when she was not there,
But her presence cannot be extracted.

Like the ivy that encasing the walls, 
Becomes the thing holding them up,
She’s there,
Metering my memories with naps peaking glimpses of daytime tv,
Chocolate chip cookies and overnight stays;

Now I meter hers by holding her hand,
Watching the drip and the lights,
Reminding her 


Of her name and the day.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

The Art of the End

She’s teaching me to be old:
With every Thank you uttered
To every nurse who draws her blood;
With every reassurance
That everything is good;
With every stifled groan
She can’t remember to repress;
With every single visitor
Who comes with old regrets.

She’s teaching me how the body
Swallows up itself:
How the mind can lose the past
But not civility;
How the shriveled skin
Can still hold tight;
How the smallness of a frame
Can recede and shrink and fade.

She’s teaching me the art of the end,
Of slipping away,
A lesson I’ll only remember
As long as there’s no need.
But I’m studying hard,
Trying to learn the softness of the language,
So maybe something here will help me there someday
When my own body begins to turn away,
When she is gone and someone uninitiated
Tries to set me right—

And I’m retelling stories of this night,
And they know it might have happened,
The way I know she might have loved
Playing basketball when she was twenty-three
(At five foot nothing)—
The only thing she can recall from the eighty years she’s known.

We must not get to pick our memories,
So I know this useful one will go,
And I’ll likely only know the day I sledded in the snow,
Forgetting who was there and where I was but not that I was thirty-three
Or the wind-chapped sting of glee
As gravity pulled me

So hard away from home.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Time

I can see change
But not time.
I can hear melody
And imagine time like that—
More fanciful than the ticking, chiming of a clock.
I can touch the empty cradle, the fallen leaf,
But time’s texture is a mystery.
Wherever, whatever
Time is,
I see the lightning bolts of white
Working their way
Like magic
From my temple to my skull,
And whatever Time is,

It has touched me.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

What You Have to Do

The night we brought him home
From where he’d stayed throughout the move,
The turtle died. How Landon knew, I was never clear
Because I was more focused on the Injustice of Death,
How the Kids Would Take It,
WHY.
And then, forgetting, when I found it awaiting burial
(Formal rites of interment must be delayed until the family can be gathered)
In the bathroom in the middle of the night,
Bumped it,
Looked to see what I’d bumped (a bucket with a dead turtle sitting listlessly
Inside like a giant rock one of the kids had found and left
Somewhere strange),
And saw—of course I screamed. There are women who can kill rattlesnakes, set
Mouse traps, clean up the remains
Of whatever the cat brings in. I’ve known them. But they are never
The face that greets me in the mirror. I would not burn down the house over such a thing,
I’d just drive out of state.

The ceremonies progressed, Landon playing pall bearer, minister, and grave-digger
(With the borrowed shovel the handyman was strangely glad to loan).
We said a prayer (St. Francis preached to birds):
Please grant peace to
Thank you for the joy of
All creatures are Your handiwork.

And then the call. From his place of suit and tie, he’d searched a little longer,
Wondered what had given rise to sudden death and found
That reptiles (even turtles) hibernate.
He might not be dead. He said he’d never ask me to dig up a dead turtle
Like some kind of twisted horror flick…
Of course, the only thing I could imagine worse than digging up a dead turtle
Was a live turtle dying slowly in my back yard.
I did what any mother would do:
  • ·       Locked the kids in the basement.
  • ·       Poured a glass of whiskey.
  • ·       Found a broken beach shovel (because by now the handyman was gone).
  • ·       Sat down by the turtle’s fresh-turned grave.
  • ·       Began speaking to myself/my long-dead father about Mark Twain and Faulkner and the funny way the dead come back to haunt us.

The thing about unburying dead turtles is this: you have to touch them. Live turtles
Are potentially hazardous
If they are snapping turtles or
If you lick them. But the hazard is only potential, and otherwise they’re funny creatures
That run away like dogs when you put them in the lawn
And run in circles like bugs if you trap them
And scowl like my great-grandmother when my brother was being bad. Dead turtles
Are a different story. Their potential for hazard has been fully met: they are the epitome of dead.
And here I was touching one.
Not just touching, either. I was digging him up, collecting him in a box,
To take back to my kitchen to nurse him back to life:
After Failed Experiment with Monsters, Dr. Frankenstein Moves to Zombie Turtles.

When resurrecting turtles, you have to:
  • ·       Wrap them in towels.
  • ·       Drop water on them from syringes, three drops at a time (like a witch’s potion).
  • ·       Put a heat lamp above them (because heat + a dead body = LIFE).


You have to be patient. Let the turtle warming in the kitchen gestate
While you try to think of other things (not the times you threatened to make him into soup).
You have to check him periodically (if you’re not staying with him throughout the procedure),
To look for signs of life.

Signs of death are clearer, though. Once putrefaction sets in, the situation ceases to be
Ambiguous.
I still don’t know exactly how.
I screamed something like “Mouse in the kitchen!”
Loaded the kids in the van
And waited at McDonald’s for Landon to come home

And re-bury the dead turtle.