Dear Mom

There’s a hurricane coming.
Before the rain begins,

I’ve cut some rudbeckia for you—
I found a few faint coneflowers, too.

but most everything else has passed.

I arranged them just now
in an old glass bottle
like the ones you collected.

The wind is picking up and
the birds are calling.

---

Every once in a great while, something emerges. I suppose it happens quite often. Every once in a great while, I notice.

spring fragment

the afternoon sun is strong
even though apple blossoms are weeks away
and only slightest hints of early-green
appear on the knoll horizon

smoke drifts from the pile of collected brush
as my father points out streaks of grey
in the stubble on my cheek

—

i always wonder if there is more to come

ten

it was a purple one that first caught his eye
as we walked through the field—
perhaps some sort of clover,
but i don’t know the name in french.
papa, he showed me,
adding the smallest white daisies
and a few others i don’t recognize—
a tall thin grass, and
even dandelions, too.

they might not last the car ride home,
but they’ve once been collected,
spilling gently over the edge
of the vase he made of his hand.

—

My first post here in more than eighteen months. I think the moments have still been with me. Perhaps I’ve been better at not becoming attached—or perhaps I’ve been neglecting to pay attention.

Rudbeckia

the rudbeckia aren’t usually still in bloom,

so close to my birthday,

and even these are brittle –

but in the patch near the small gravel pile,

perhaps sheltered by the overgrown viburnum,

a few stragglers remain.

if I’d noticed them last year I might have arranged

one more vase

and placed it by her bedside,

so she could have turned her head

and thought to herself,

how I love those black-eyed susans.

 

Square with Rounded Corners

The picture of the two of us,
pulled from my suit-coat pocket,
leans on my dresser.

Square with rounded corners,
faded blue ink–
Kodak May 1980–
printed on the back.

I scanned it for my lock screen, too,
so I can see myself
leaning up against her in the slanted spring light.

The first few days after
Mom taught me how to die
were simpler–

but when I walk outside,
leaves are turning,
afternoons are darker now.

I Peel an Orange

Our home is a pale shade of blue,
one you might find looking west in the spring
minutes after sunrise,
or in a robin’s egg whose green tints
have been replaced by gentle grays.

It was once a deep red,
more readily apparent in recent years
from the street-facing, sun-bleached southern side,
where spots of peeling and chipping have grown
past neighborly size,

reflecting the same inertia
that has kept me from replacing
the almost imperceptibly dripping basement pipe.

I peel an orange –
the fruit itself is disappointing and dry;

my son pushes the lawnmower
back and forth across the lawn,
glancing to me each time he makes a turn.

It’s the first time I’ve stood back so far.

Ango Morning [3]

sounds of tenzo’s teacups
and pots for oatmeal
filter through the zendo’s morning incense,

through my regret
for the unfolding of
the evening before.

a patch of emerging sunlight
slanted on the old oak floor
receives my prostration.

Ango Morning [2]

winter dawn strains through
slatted windows;
snow sits over the grounds
with no thought of attainment.
tears in the zendo fall,
unencumbered by gravity.

Cardboard Box

I’m finally looking into the cardboard box
I brought home from my mother’s house
late last month;

The clementines she insisted I take and perched on top
have long since been eaten;
it’s been otherwise untouched
sitting in the corner of the yellow room.

Two pairs of my infant pajamas —
The yellow corduroy with the embroidered lion;
the faded white and green night dress.
She had remarked on the drawstring
she had sewn into the bottom,
how it was still there,
and the fold-over sleeves to keep me from scratching myself
as I slept in my crib.

My white shoes, too —
laces gone,
but still with their impossibly stiff soles;
my grandmother’s blue-and-white Canton ware,
wrapped in the 1975 Daily News
from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

That night,
just before I left,
we sat on the basement couch flipping through
faded Kodak prints, square with rounded corners,
(most taken before we moved into the house on the hill).

We paused at one where I wore that night dress,
standing with my sister
in the deep darkness of an evening east window.
There were others, too, from that forty-years-ago,
and she told me again about each one.

We had such fun, she said,
such fun.

Before the Snow Arrives

A poem hasn’t completed me
since last season;

I bring an occasional one
to the finish –
so I don’t forget
how many lines are in a stanza,
or to remind myself
the weight of my pencil.

I have to get the leaves moved;

the ones scattered
withered
across the lawn

I have to get them moved
before the snow arrives.