At bedtime your names, spoken, act on her
Like a two-toned bell on Pavlov's dog.
She waves a small hand,
Secure in the fact
She knows best,
And her lips twist
To form a soft 'bye,' which she repeats
A score of times, while my heart
Beats an involuntary echo, before
She sinks into the nest I built
Of blankets for her rest.
The trees were bare
But you wore fall with charm--
Gold, brown, and plum
For her russet and deep green.
Camera heavy on your neck, with a small smile
And crinkled eyes, you shuffled down the aisle.
Though strangers, you sought us
To give comfort for loss,
Not judgement of grief,
On a day confused by wounds and joy.
Eleven months later in hospital light,
I heard the grievous news
That when our little one flew
Earth for heaven, you did, too.
Your wife and you together
Taught that small words have weight,
Comfort comes quietly in a corner,
And it takes just one meeting
To miss a great man.
And when I think of our baby, I see
Gold, brown, and plum
With russet and deep green.
Well, Dad--
If old habits die hard,
You bear some blame
When I take the bait,
Open my mouth,
And let hounds race
Baying from my lips.
But tonight, it's mine.
I chased those hounds down
Driving home in the dark,
As rain-slick shapes made me start.
Ten years today
Since you were gone.
In blue-moon light,
I still send dogs barking,
But there's no thrill to this hunt.
What did we seek
Past the gleam of sharp wit
And sharp words?
Each solid hit is empty
If it lands on one you love.
Time and loss taught me
What nothing else did.
Peel back pride, and
Only love remains.
Pain will bear fruit.
Like Athena leaping forth
From her father's cloven skull
They spring to mind,
Fully formed from place apart.
Words as keen as the spear she bore,
Beside and before.
Quietly fit and geared for war,
Unwilling to give way.
________________________________
The line grew slack-- a miracle.
Along with me, he slowed and stood,
And watched a cloud of red-winged birds
Wheel and drop--
A kerchief draped with us inside.
Swallowed by their song of Home,
I held my breath and heard
A spell which forced my pause.
As I looked, a line drew near of geese,
And neatly flapped above the bony tree
To form a cross with those black birds and me,
Rooted to a panting dog.
Layers of life from cloud to earth,
Strata of feathers and skin and hide,
Together we breathed,
Above and below,
Until that dog, beside himself, leapt forth,
And off they flew.
Beauty has a razor edge
And memory, too.
Joined they are a fearsome pair.
I watched them go, and cried,
And heard my father's voice,
Who, in spite of all the dark he feared,
Faced the sky each fall and said
Spring is just around the bend.
______________________
11/10/14
For my dad, who loved trees in fall and peepers in spring.
We miss you.
I sat drably in dust while sorting sheaves of garlic innumerable,
My thoughts a litany of what must be done,
When a sudden gasp and hushed command broke through monotony.
The line from her outstretched finger led to the barn
And from there to its peak,
Where a heron stood, calm and aloof like a king.
The moment stretched long, but he a second later stirred--
Slow beating of wings, a wash of blues and grays,
Elegant motion with no need of haste.
He rose above the fretful hens
And sailed over their tedium and care
On an unseen draft of warmth, and I,
One who sees purpose in all things,
Left a part of me there, a dry stalk with garlic at my feet,
Mouth open, eyes tied to him passing overhead.
Celts in ages past thought they knew just where
Our threadbare world grew thinner still,
And Heaven drew near to fill the space,
Like wind flows through a rent or tear.
Find you a shard of stone that juts in air,
Perhaps a foggy moor with no one near,
And Time, the steady rule by which we live,
No longer curbs us in with stubborn grip.
The inner self, bound per decree, stands free
To simply be with no restraint. No gates
Rise tall between what's past and now
Or even block the sight from what is yet to be.
These patches stand aloof from all around
And feed a need within too often bare,
But will not welcome drifters in without exchange,
For one must lose something if one would gain.
Some hunt for sacred spots with purposed will,
Though I've found most by stumbling in,
Heedless of that to which I near,
Until I cannot make the choice to skirt around
Nor gain what I may not wish to bear.
A bedroom, crammed with odds and ends,
Unlikely though it was, became a timeless spot one night.
In the dark it rose between the dresser and the bed
To fill the room: in darkness, unseen light.
No one guessed a box recording sound
In the home of new-wed man and wife
Would speak again untouched and fresh--
No less the man and wife, much older now,
Who lay and listened as ghosts took on flesh.
A father's words that were unheard for eighteen years,
His voice a form of presence while no longer here,
As if no time had passed made joy and pain
Just as they had before spring up again.
And then into the silence spoke a friend--
Life and warmth he was, who died too young
For us to know he'd go, which left,
As is the case, no time to say goodbye,
Just this voice for us to apprehend.
Departing blackbirds thought our home was rest this year,
Settling in great swarms to blanket backyard trees
And giving further burden to the heavy heads of sunflowers,
Which were, at last, too bent to face the sun,
And which the many birds stripped bare,
A pointillism brought to life by need.
Last week the stars shone hard and bright,
With force that only winter air allows.
Orion propped up on his elbows, the Dog curled near,
And I below, a single spot of ink among the multitude.
This morning I walked toward dawn
And did not see it for what it was,
Thinking in error that the shaft of white was a neighbor
Out for who-knows-what at five o'clock.
Today, like a flock of birds, my sister's husband and his kin
Will swoop upon a yellow house, and their weight will ease a burden.
The air will smell of diesel fuel, the fallen leaves, and new snow,
A potent mix to make one crave cold water and saltines,
A rising incense in mid-November to resurrect my father.
________________________________________________
November doesn't know what to do with itself. In the space between all the endings and all the beginnings, I, too, find myself turning in blank circles. In my calendar today, November 10th-- "Dad."
Everyone's right. Grief changes, and we change with it, but it doesn't end. It's not something to cross off a list and leave behind. I guess, instead, it's something that forces clumsy poetry first thing in the morning.
They call it Fierce to face a cliff, to spider up
with climbing shoes and coiled rope, and Brave
to whack through bush in land unknown.
Brave to roam on earth that's tall and wide,
and Fierce to fly toward color, dust, and riot.
And so it sometimes is, but who I was
would not have called it such,
bent as I was toward tangle and wild,
reaches of trees and outcrops of stone.
A scrappy mass of freckles and bone,
not fierce or brave,
a simple tomboy hunting fun
(which these pursuits would seem to be).
Now I bend to sow the corn,
with silver threading brown,
the same I was before
but more
and Fierce and Brave are many things,
so few would fit into my young-girl mind.
Fierce is facing dirty bowls with tired eyes
and Brave is choosing children over shouts of all who name us Fools.
Seeds over space,
souls over all,
again and again,
with a song.
Jackknives in the sock drawer and ermine in the freezer.
Three years ago today.
Death is still terrible and confusing down here. It's still almost-understood and right at times.
It's harder to write now than it was then-- then when emotion overwhelmed inhibition and the need to process was so great-- but I came across this in my blogger drafts. A rush of fragmented prose from 5 months after Dad died that I typed into a blogger draft box because a need existed, but I had ripped up my last journal nearly a decade before.
April 9th.
Six days before my 36th birthday.
A taste of spring in the air but still with winter's chill.
Gray day.
Typing my mother's Last Will and Testament
while staring at my father's Last Will and Testament
(and plagiarizing nearly the entire thing where appropriate).
Leaving spaces for my mother's initials and signature
while staring at my father's initials and signature--
the signature marked from a hospital bed in a city three hours away.
The will my uncle produced because the need was clear, and Dad had never written one.
I come by procrastination honestly.
On the familiar wooden clipboard of my father's
I secure two freshly printed copies of my mother's will, and, in so doing,
notice that tucked behind all the rest and waiting in the back is my father's last note.
I know it is so because at the top my mother's neat handwriting names it "Dad's last note."
Fri. Nov. 7,-
*Social Worker-
(Insur.?)
1. "Life" Insur. Policies- Where & NYS Pension System?
2. Keys- Cars, misc., tractors, Ladders, Lawn tractors.
Those sweeping lines and flourishes.
Asterisks, circles, lines, emphatic quotation marks.
All sloppier than usual because he was so very weak.
3. Car Registrations- Transfer to Nancy
I run my fingers over the ink.
Try to conjure him up.
His fingers on the pen
(from which flowed the ink)
and my fingers on the ink.
We all hold names inside that are rarely or never seen-- aspects of self that don't easily fit into current seasons, quietly biding their time. Undeveloped, hopeful possibilities. Roads not taken with "Closed" on their gates. Others are uglier, and those we deliberately bury in hopes that no one senses them lurking. A great bundle of names carried in one person, and, sometimes, it's hard to reconcile them all.
Almost sixteen years ago, the best friend of all named me "Wifey." Not quite a year later, "Mama" joined the ranks, a name I had not envisioned and for which I did not feel prepared. It's hard to believe that I've been Mama now for 15 years, from those months of carrying Mildred within-- John and I together a young jumble of bewilderment, uncertainty, and excitement at the newness of being Parents-- to now, carrying this little one so comfortably that I sometimes forget the gift that squirms and stretches in the dark warmth of my womb.
One day, Lord willing, this present life's joy and work will join me in worship of our Father, all living souls who stand and sing beside me. The bulk of my earthly energy carried into Heaven. We'll ring around the throne together, my Joy-Work and John and I, and we'll sing the praises of Him who shaped us. The reality of this reconciles everything, this wonder that God has worked into the world.
The best way to visit your father's grave for the second time, a year and a half since
you first stood there--that first and only time--bundled against the
bitter wind, throat tight, tears freezing as they fell, your eyes fixed
on the mound of freshly hilled earth in a heap near the box that held
his used-up form,
is here and now,
on
your birthday, on a midmorning when spring moves sweet and soft, out walking with
your husband and children and with the sun and great big blue above.
To
without warning or knowledge follow their feet down the first hill and
the second and to turn right onto the rutted path that leads through
what has been cow pasture and cornfield and is this day just a stretch
of dry brown newly greening.
With breath caught sharp
in surprise at the turn, tears splashing warm as you walk behind,
you'll watch winter-white limbs flashing over grass on the
path to your father's grave, where you'll stand with them above what he no
longer needs.
Best, too, to visit with a memory of a
dark-eyed boy fresh from the sea, who stood below you in the night and
snow throwing rocks at your window. Remember the sight of his head from
above, the surprise of it all, the first introduction to the family,
and, then, the escape to talk. Remember a winter walk down the
hill and a right turn onto that rutted path leading through a cornfield to a
graveyard.
Hold the memory of the snow, the stars, the piercing chill, and
his love, of a pocketwatch lost by a headstone and of its later rescue.
The memory of a dark-eyed boy who now stands beside you as a dark-eyed
man watching children spin in the sun. And you, with a baby soon-born
nudging your bones, a wordless reminder of Life over death.
I curled in bed and watched the gray flush peach and gold
while saluting the bird that would not cease outside my window
its unrelenting stream of staccato and pitch, and, there,
quiet and still, I thought of life and you.
You, who hold home and all familiar in your eyes,
with shadows that still beguile
and bind to what lies below.
And of our seven saplings- and the small one soon to come,
slowly stirring beneath the covers and my skin,
while muscles tighten and contract,
while I watch the light,
listen to the bird,
and think of you.
The only art class I've ever taken was a hurried plunge into ceramics that lasted three weeks. The final week of the course, a friend said that she liked it when our professor asked me to explain my pieces because I saw the world in symbols. I realized she was right. My responses to the professor weren't as much explanations of my clumsy art as they were fumbling attempts to translate private symbolism into a common tongue.
Another way I process the world is through words. John won me with a string of them that led straight to his heart, I read and sing them to our children, I feel the urge to plunk them out here from time to time, and they rattle around my head throughout the week, grouping themselves into phrases and sentences that never form an orderly line, let alone make it to paper or screen.
Over the last few days, I've come to myself with a start, realizing that for who knows how many minutes, I was composing a poem in my head that no one will see. Poems about all that can't fit into a space of two weeks, poems about an ermine in the freezer and piles of notes on a microwave and bottles of peppermint, poems about a jug of cold water on a wood wagon and my father's camouflage hat. They wink in and out, barely begun and quickly forgotten, but they're a silent salute to my Dad and a way for me to untangle things too large to understand.
I've never
liked November, but this year, the landscape is a perfect counterpoint. September's bustle of birds and insects, that riotous
color of October-- all have slowed into long, bare stretches of sky and a span of quiet.
The girls and I just got back from doing animal chores for my parents. We fed, watered, and walked Ruger. We fed and watered Mr. Brutus. We rounded up the escaped horses, moved their sly bones back into the pasture without mishap, and slap-dash mended the fence.
And my heart was so full. I don't understand the human condition. I don't understand the tangled web of family and its immutable bonds. I don't understand death. I don't understand the resurrection of the body. I don't understand forgiveness and grace and love-- oh, such great Love. These are too large for me. But, yet, I do understand. Their truth shakes my bones and their presence brings peace.
My Dad starts chemo treatment tomorrow in a city three hours away. My thoughts and prayers are with him and my mom. I find myself walking around the house, too distracted to remember why I'm walking. The tears suddenly dropping into my salad surprise me, because I didn't realize I was crying.
The statistics are impartial: a 20% chance that the short course of treatment will send his weak body onward to his waiting Father; a 50% chance of it doing little or nothing, in which case, he will come home to us to die. The other percentage is what we hope and pray for, but God is above all of these. If he chooses to gather my father in His arms before then, there is peace-- a reservoir of peace and so much gratefulness for what He has given our family in the last week.
And then there's my youngest sister Debbie, who seems to take the hay-strewn thoughts out of my head, and orders them beautifully.
Stones are silent
Riverbed
Stars and years pass overhead.
Comet's tail lashed out the moon,
so morning's sun sat up too soon.
Knew a world in night-dark eyes,
two palms touched, tried on for size.
One with one and fire between,
hear the word I heard unseen.
___________________________________________
Gypsy man, I hold that rain-soaked rag,
with scent and memories clinging.
And, in empty-bellied hurry and haste,
I set down a list (about a man who loves lists) to properly begin today:
Faithful
Compassionate
An earnest follower of the Lord God
A lover of Justice and a liver of Grace
Crazier than most
Quirky as all get-out
Boardgame geek any day of the week
Thoughtful
Deliberate
Impulsive
Real
As honest as Abe (but a lot more fun).
A smith who turns words on their heads
One who sees the Darkness and the Light
One who Knows me, and yet loves me wholly as I am.
One who gives freely like someone who has nothing to lose.
The only boy I've ever kissed.
A first love and a last love.
And now, with three God-given sweetlings, a perfect Papa.
It can be said of anyone, I suppose, but, really, John's like no other.
I love him until all the worlds fail and then some.
True as blue. Together two.
If all of time came uncoiled, the length of these last five years would be smaller than sight. But we, living from one day to another, marvel at the swiftness of them. It feels like yesterday and too far away to remember.
Barefoot, with my fists full of programs and the great clouds of my dress slung over my shoulder, I entered the church at ten to eleven, still wishing for the gloomy weather to turn face so that we could marry next to the woods. A few minutes and one looped ponytail later, I stepped into the dress, my mom laced up the back, Belle Michelle snapped a few pictures, and I was off down the aisle to see John.
Five years ago today, it was,
in the best month of all with my best friend of all.
Happy fifth to us!
