WORDS I AM HOT AND CAUGHT I am hot and caught firmly held in a web of wishes, I am trying to find the reddest words to cut myself out. I want quick red words. BE CAREFUL OF WORDS you drop like pebbles in the pond I shield behind a wall of evergreen. See them resting on the sun-fingered floor: copper piece blue fragment something lavender. Although I have not touched one, they still move. dreaming of the splash on silent water, the gentle descent, they toss in their sleep. I pause, Feel slow circles circling circles, wait long for calm. A CLEANING LADY COMMENTS ON MRS. BEECHER’S PASSING Some people don let you clean like you want to. Here, I clean until I feels good. I scrub every inch with bleach. Whenever there’s someone dies I throw out the pillow. I go over it all until I feels good, You know? Bed clean and bare, cover it with white sheets, nothing ever been in this room. It hard work, Washing the word away. A LAMENT Oh Lord, who gave me will and brain and body; Oh Lord, who set me in this box of puzzle pieces: Give me words to speak. What shall I tell my friend When she brings me a child, Blue, beaten, broken by the mother’s hand? My friend taunts me, demands to know: “Where is your God? Could a loving God allow this?” I am silent. I have no words to fit in the cracks Between ill-fitting puzzle pieces. I see another friend, the one who clowned, joked and danced, now drugged, sulking, silent, I remember how I used to flit around him Like a mother playing with light. Now the light is gone. Only the cold, gray bulb remains. The mother sits on the sidewalk waiting. No words to fit in the cracks. Yet I believe you’ll send words, Lord. I trust you. You know how the pieces of this world puzzle fit together. Someday you’ll put the last piece in place, Step back and say: “It is good.” Then I won’t need words to fill the cracks. But now I do. While waiting for the your gift of speech, While waiting for puzzle pieces I will embrace the taunting friend, the battered child, the sulking clown. I am waiting, Lord. Give me words to speak.
FATHER LOSS CHILDREN UNDER FOURTEEN NOT ADMITTED I clump down the stairs in Daddy’s shoes. Mother gives me some death words. They don’t fit anyway. Take them back, mother. Relatives fly to our house like black birds. Curled in uncle’s lap I watch. “What did that mean?” “We’re talking German, Chrissie.” At the back of the church a long box with a person in it. I want to look inside but I’m too far away. Under the fir trees: a stone and a hole. Is it really six feet? Why is the lid shut? May I move closer, mother? AFTERNOON NAP I descend to the basement, knees trembling, past the dolls I played with, the Chinese Checkers, a yellowed scrapbook of recipes, a 1956 phonebook from Kitchener. There is my father’s name; we lived on Grand Street. Everything down here holds the comfort of dying, voices low and heavy with dust, will not keep me awake. Here it is quiet, cool and deep. I unlace my shoes, stroke the dark nap, rest my length beneath the brown quilt on the same bed that cradled the curve of my mother and father. I will sink my head in the feather pillow, study the picture my sister painted, the adobe house in the snow. I will rest from every living thing, my eyes failing, waiting for white flakes to fall on me LETTING GO This is how it should be: Christmas vacation, and I am six; Daddy and I are driving outside the city to a great hill with untouched snow. Sun warms the car. I climb up the tracks Daddy makes hearing the crunch each time the first time. We stand at the top, just Daddy and I, breathing, and the sparrows laugh. “I’m afraid,” I say. But then we’re sailing and I ‘m safe on a narrow strip of wood clinging to his broad back, a solid thing in a swaying world, and I’m laughing and wishing we could fall like this forever into the sun sparkles and whipping wind and the white snowdrift waiting to embrace us over and over and over. GAINING ENTRANCE The people guarding the door seem very tall. They have my father inside, and once in a great while they bring me word: “He is alive and well and living in New York.” So why am I standing here under this sign? I am only seven. But I want to see for myself. I try a new line: I have no father. I lead this child through the linoleum maze to a bed with an old man in it. I hold myself back while the child looks and touches and whispers, “I have no father.” I hold her the way Daddy once held me. (Mother, give me your hands for a while. I want their memory.) This time, I will tell the story. This time, I will be Mother. Come, she says, we will go to the hospital to visit him (to say goodbye). I put on Mother’s hat. I put on Mother’s coat. My shoes will tap-echo-tap on the linoleum. I take a small hand. All I have left are photos black and white shadows of you, studied drawings of me visiting you. I want to be seven again And sit on your lap. I want to write a long letter. I want to find the voice I’ve lost, your beard scratching my cheek, your size 12 shoes I played in. When I find the cemetery near my home The gravestone is a door. He stands there blessing me good bye yet I keep coming back. I go on long fruitless journeys, stopping to look at a map. I am standing on a hill beside a shed. I rush toward a tall slender dark-haired man. The shadowy figure far ahead stops and turns around But I can’t run toward him. Someone inside me screams, “Come back.” I turn away. I am not ready. I’ve been standing at the door since I was seven Studying the sign that says I am not admitted. Even now, the people guarding the door are very tall in their white coats They have my father inside.
THE BODY LOVE POEM Because I have lupus the sun and I are separated; We are not allowed to look at one another on this earth. So I smile in mirrors and savor reflections in glass, long fingers of light across grassy sand hills, tiny diamonds riding dust, the glow on children’s faces in late afternoon, the restrained moonlight. Sometimes I feel something warm stroking my back. BORN AGAIN I am living in a hospital bed wondering how they get the blood out of all those sheets. Mounds of sheets pillow cases towels washcloths hospital gowns stained with drops of blood pass through a mysterious machine and emerge white spotless Christine. BIRTH AFTER SICKNESS A storm shakes the screens but I sleep. Crocus buds hide behind hospital windows. Waking up, the wind blows the curtain open for the full moon. I heave a sigh, turn over. Months later my toes still feel the coolness of the descent. They’ve stepped down, won’t come back. Occasionally a cool touch on my shoulder or arm. It does not direct or push. Just a touch. Someone washed off the blood, invited me out. HEALTH AND HUMAN VALUES In the doctor’s office even the chairs are sterile in their uniform placement against the white wall. Square wooden sides, seats in shades of gray. There is light under a silver dome but no one lives here. The magazines are aligned, rectangular columns. I examine a purple gauzy dress in Cosmopolitan before the door shuts. Trapped in a tan bed with paper covers, I know the polish cabinet holds needles wrapped in plastic, wooden depressors and more paper covers. They draw my blood but none of the color leaks out. INSIDE YOURSELF Listen. I’m telling you, the body is not static, there’s motion inside there. The lungs, sucking in and out like great frothy pink balloons. That heart, pumping, pulsing, rocking your chest, The blood, pulsing, sliding, racing along millions of vessels. And those glands, sliding out their secretions. See them slithering into your stomach? And there goes the stomach, kneading itself like a batch of bread dough till it squirts its contents below. And there’s more I won’t tell you. I’ll let you listen, MODESTY AT AGE TWELVE Saturday evening I wait shivering in grandmother’s drafty kitchen, far from friendly porcelain and a lock on the door Grandmother dips water from a well in the black stove. The water slaps the metal washtub like a shot; I edge closer to the water stampede, the cloud of steam. But I wait till she leaves to strip and climb in. She’s not my mother. My eyes guard the open door. I squeeze warm rivers down my back. I feel the metal ridges on my soft bottom. I bathe my soul in dreams. Now I am a pioneer. A week ago my husband left for town; The wilderness is now mine. I’ll garden. I’ll collect herbs. I’ll wander the grownover trails. I’ll find where the sun sets. I smile my secret at the black wood stove. She laughs, gives me two loaves of bread. A toy train hoots in the next room. My hand starts over the edge to the towel My brother’s turn is next. Once nightgowned in dry flannel I grin. No one has seen. No one knows.
NATURE’S ORDER IN THE CORNFIELD In the cornfield a hundred pathways lead to the east end where the roots of mulberries dangle over the edge where a duck holds her ducklings in a circle of water. PIE DUST How wonderful to see Mother with pie dust on her skirt, the white shadow of her hand against her hip. THE BLACKBIRD I dream of a black bird sitting on the front seat. Naming the fear it becomes a shadow and flies away. 308 WEST GRAND STREET I didn’t know how the place drew me; I just followed my dreams to the lilac bushes, clawed my way in, the branches clawing back, and sat still in the little clearing. Encircled by the purple and green and silence I breathed in the loving lilac smell And talked quietly. It was easier somehow To hear them there –those imaginary friends children befriend so naturally— far from my brother, far from sagging house, far from the dissonance of grownups talking. SUMMER’S END On the dark porch we sing old hymns, watch the wind waltz. Cicadas wind down. Far across the prairie one star ices the sky. Near our heads pear tree boughs ache with fruit. AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS I am waiting I am waiting for you to say yes to my branches laden with solid fruits. each branch is dancing, each branch is praising, a festival of mangoes, limes, peaches, passion fruit. I sing an old song for you who will give my valley a name. ECLIPSE My hands are ready, sister, waiting to touch the dark diamond of his crown, a rim of white skin. All this womb-wrapped night I wait beside you. Your kneeling frame swells. Fingers clench wood. Damp, black elfin head fills my palms. Shaking, I grasp warm, wet shoulders blinded by light from the other side of the moon. IF I HAD ONLY ONE SUMMER If I had only one summer I would spend all my money on a stone house by the river. There we would live, my sisters and I, by the morning call of the cardinals the whistle of the tea kettle the splash in our cups the smell of foreign teas and fresh scones. By our bare feet the ringed cat would swirl herself round the first stripe of sun. We would walk in the morning, my sisters, the cat and I down the green pathway, the trees above us like a fan, the river on our left holding ducks and geese, quiet as leaves. In the evening we would watch from the porch all the silent lights of the night: the evening star, the slice of white moon. sated with holiness we would sleep, our nights full of fireflies flying. THE CAT The cat watches the sparrows Her body low her hind legs set The sparrows eat the seed with delicate mouse-like beaks shelving the shells off the feeder unaware of the cat bent below her hind legs set, the flash across the window, feathers unfurled disappearing in the green The cat has swirled herself in a gray ball on the green rocker. I am settled in the flowered stuffed chair, my feet propped on a disintegrating straw footstool. The sparrows have left now, but a moment ago they were picking at the seed left in the feeder. The sky is blue and fresh with the leaves starting to turn yellow. The postman bangs open the boxes. HEARING VOICES I wonder if I am really a moth, gray, shadowy thing, always fluttering, seeking light at old lampposts. Does it stroke the flames nervously, trying to find a safe way in? I think I see it dart away, float back, fly away, then stray back again. . . . so hard to resist, this call of the burning ones: Light! Light! Light! PANGS OF GREEN On that day the sea gives us only the purest stones; Pink, blue, gray round like eggs. We fill our skirts like harvest women, flirting with thunder until we sway heavy with life compressed, grated, crushed ground from old secrets. Why do we come? Where do we go? The arcs rise over our heads, casting forth their fruit. We hear ancient voices And feel pangs of green. WAITING The rain is a-playing And the piano a-dancing. The rain kisses the sidewalk, And notes caress each other. The rain descends outside; The music rises inside, a fountain overflowing while water slides slowly down to the gutters, down to the source where music waits, where everything waits to rise up, reach up, spring up with wet hands holding flutes.
EXPLORATION THE CIGARETTE She is all talcum powder and apron pocket. I stand between boiling fruit and the true black book slipped behind checked gingham, my dotted swiss dress and raspberry conscience clashing, my hand knotted. Her silence pricks me like strokes from confessional floors, strokes me with benedictions of bar soap. A wool braid in my throat tightens the whimper of a screen door spring. I pinch the stuff flat as a wafer. CRAZY WOMAN I am Jesus. I feel all cool outside pale and waxen but inside hot and burning that tightens my muscles makes them unable to stop from touching the wax man in the hospital bed. You try to stop me but you can’t— stop me from touching myself because of that hot burning in my chest. EXPLORING I find my mother’s old Dutch oven. Heavy, black, spherical— I imagine it looked like this when father gave it to her 40 years ago. Now as I study that black hole in my kitchen, I feel conditions must be right to slip through this density of memories to their time, or at the very least, by some chance tilting, to snatch compressed messages from the dark space before my birth. WINTER DREAMS I am lying in white cotton sheets in that gray place where a real word slips in. My eyes are closed. I have become an old person. I take long naps. My knees shake when I climb out of the shower. I am invited to health seminars at the hospital. All this so I can band together with the gray-haired group as it stands together waiting for a trip through Venice or a fall across the waves into the ocean of everything. The buds on the oak tree brush my window with small memories of leaves. They turn themselves over and upon each other like the sparrows who struggle in tandem. I wonder if they are fighting for space or love or because no one told them the nest is already built. I found it hooked in a thorn bush where anyone could see. I remember.
OBLATE EARLY NOVITIATE The air is cold. We are late. I drive with Sister Lorraine to a monk’s abbey in Manitoba. She unfastens the steel gate. “Now run,” she says, and we run under the stars and the half moon to a small chapel. Two lines of men in white robes do not stop for us. They sing below us, their voices rising and falling, about their life in the garden, their pleasure under the stars, the daily arguments, the colors in the soup pot, I hear ancient voices join, sing about their peace. Now I need to hear them again as the earth grows smaller. They sing to each other, for twenty years they sing, and now in a riverbank saved from suburban sprawl I hear a cricket sound the pitch And riverbirds unhook their notes in beneficent echoes. ART FOR THE POOR IN SPIRIT The day is almost rubbed out now; God was up early with paper and crayon, making pictures for us, carefully rolling deepest blue across the empty sheets. A touch of coral, then grey, columns rising in the foreground, bit by bit the color collects until, there – God steps back and breathes deeply. It takes a long time each morning to make ten million rubbings for those who cannot buy the stone. GOD’S GRACE It’s like this: It’s your turn to do dishes and you’ve let them pile up over the table and the stove and the chairs and the top of the refrigerator, and your roommate, who hates doing dishes, having nothing better to do out of love for you washes every last one. MOST PEOPLE WHO DIE Most people who die wake up full of praise. They saw Jesus. But I forget that part. Even so, I know that women with lights in their eyes held my hand while I was looking out the window. They drew the blinds. These women reflect the light; Their eyes are windows, too. They know the way in and the way out. THIS SLOW DISROBING I am writing a letter to a man I’ve never met. He has no face. I am telling him about the clothes I am taking off. With each letter, another layer falls at my feet. He does the same for me. Perhaps this way we will give each other faces.
DREAMS IN THE CHURCH REFRIGERATOR “Our refrigerator is dying,” the president says. The ladies lean their heads and nod. I wonder how they got so small, lined in the egg rack and along the metal shelves in neat rows, as brightly painted as Ukrainian Easter eggs. “In the summer I have to defrost mine every other whipstitch,” says the lady with dark hair over a gaunt face. She wears a see-through salmon blouse under a flowered jumper. Her eyes are outlined in a perfect circle, like an owl’s. The fat Mrs in green shorts says, “hm-m-m.” She has brought an enormous plate with square cavities to fill from the food on the side table. “We’re dormant,” she says. “Yes, I know.” They don’t see me, so I steal away as the refrigerator closes, hissing quietly. IN THE BLUE WILLOW PLATE I have walked miles on narrow paths to this place in the story where I sit encircled by the willow’s green serenity, I gaze across the pond at a gazebo and recognize at last it is the one in Mother’s plate, the one she placed above the rest, “because it tells a story.” I know now who I am that messengers are on their way the lovers plan their flight and I need wait for nothing but the wind to ripple willow wands and startle words from me like birds surprised to flight. THE JUDGE Someone sent him to stare at me sitting primly on the stage, my French horn silent in my lap. He was a prophet so fat and ugly he must have been spawned in my subconscious now sprawled in the twelfth row, center aisle seat at the cavernous auditorium. Play! He bellowed, And I played each note Perfectly, innocently as a 14-year-old, walked quickly past him scribbling madly, “Keep playing, young lady,” and thought, I’m done with you, fat man, done with this horn, done with your word. LOOKING FOR FAIRIES I walk past the reddening tomatoes down the hill to a path way darkened by elm leaves on each side. Water laps in gentle waves in hollows while crickets chirp an accompaniment. I cross the sand pocked with raccoon tracks and inhale a cloud of honeysuckle. An egret flies off, its neck looped like a white question mark. The ducks cluck and sit still on their bank in the river. Only the white duck with red beak, waits for me, flexing its black wings, so close I could touch it. Then I see the oak tree, spreading its leaves like wands over the path, the water. Here I stop under an old lamppost at a round grey table, chairs waiting. Here I take my daily portion of enchantment, while raindrops shed stars across the river before the wooden bridge, the way on. MERMAIDS In my still house life swirls so slowly that I can see the dark mermaids Swimming past my front door. I settle into my easy chair and pull one up. A golden-haired green treasure lines my porch with green scales and gray fins. At night she speaks in a secret language and shares bedtime rituals with me, the slow and silent one, caught with dry seaweed in my mouth.