AUBADE IN OCTOBER

 

I've missed these slow-moving autumn days,

the gray and muted morning easing

imperceptibly into afternoon, the hours,

neither short nor long, renegotiating their borders

and sovereignty among the chill mist of river,

threads of woodsmoke without source,

dogs nosing bits of earth suddenly remembered.

I've missed them in the way that I miss you,

and I miss you in ways I do not yet understand;

you who exist to me now only in the telling,

and in the silence between speech, grown longer

with age, not with hesitation but knowing.

I've missed trying to write it all down,

the familiarity of leaving for the sake of leaving,

when everywhere is suddenly north, the steady work

of window gazing, the very luxury of failing.

I've missed the leaves flaming up in their descent,

becoming as open as books, their veiny spines

withered and cracking, each life a secret

unto itself, each history whispered in passing,

each an ending, and none of them final.

DREAM DOOR

 

In the dream there is a small hidden door in my mother's bedroom, the kind that was once used for ice deliveries in old apartment buildings, or a crawl space leading to a tangle of wires, spiderwebs, and rusty pipes. But when I bend low to open it, the exact same room appears on the other side, the same bedside table and lamp, the same red bedspread, the same bottles lined up like a miniature skyline. In fact, the whole interior of the house is there, in reverse. Though I am very young, I can walk through it by memory, taking a left where normally I would go right. I can hear and smell coffee percolating from the kitchen, a television sounding low and far away. But nothing happens in this dream. It is merely a feeling of calmness I have walked into, the very strangeness of the mundane. No one is shouting here. No one is leaving. There are no sirens wailing outside the window, no red lights reflecting against the glass. It is impossible for me to tell if this is before, or after, or never was. It is a dream that I tell to no one, for there is nothing to tell. But after I wake, it's a dream I immediately want to get back to. But of course I can't return. I can never return.

THE WATER WOMAN

 

I hold the divining rods loosely, as though they were fragile things, the slender legs of something wounded or at rest, waiting for them to tap out their simple message on the air. Divination implies a pull toward the sacred, toward the promise of water underfoot, which in turn pulls forever through itself, its source a continual mystery. The superstitious call it witchery, as though it were something sinister, though they make no argument or claims to deny it. I tread lightly, as though I were already spirit, sometimes without shoes, until I get a twitch, a signal, an indication of the hush and the hollow below. It's not magic, not in the way you might think, but merely listening with the body, the whole of it, the way our people always have. Water, after all, answers to water. On a good day, when the wind is calm and the trees drink up the light, I can lead you to the right spot. I can tell you where to begin digging, where to build. The real work -- a whole lifetime of it -- is up to you.

MY MOTHER AT EIGHTY-SIX, RECOVERING FROM AN ISCHEMIC STROKE

 

This isn't the first time she has left this way -- hovering between sleep and awake, speech and silence, breath and no breath. When we were kids, the pills and the Stoli nearly washed her away, bringing her only partway back. The ECT and barbiturates softened her eyes to a blue-tinged fog, a weather we could not grasp. But this time she seems closer to the further shore, more resigned to stand among its trees and shadow. Her body sleeps on one side, like a child nuzzling closely in the first chill of autumn. The words that come now, if they come at all, tumble out in fragments, like the torn scripture of some long lost gospel. They break free of source and context, uncertain but continuing, trailing off like the memories she has spent a lifetime trying to erase. This woman, stubborn as the sun and moon, whose version of Jesus brandished a sword toward the open sky, offers neither confession nor consolation. She travels silently on wheels now, waiting without expression for her lunch and medication, for whatever can be easily recognized, waiting for her own version of leaving to return.

FIRST GENERATION

 

Our grandparents sent long, descriptive letters from across the ocean, while we recited the pledge of allegiance to a flag of forty-eight stars in a one-room schoolhouse, the familiar language of home left at the door, along with the breath-damp wool of scarves and mittens in winter. I am an American now, we were made to recite again and again, and to write it in our notebooks until it became as familiar as our own names, the names which others could not or would not pronounce correctly, and could alter with the stroke of a pen. Our prayers, too, were in English, but only when spoken out loud. Our parents, aunts, and uncles braided the old language with the new, sometimes losing track, beginning again, sometimes inventing a new word where no other could be found. But our silence, in endless variations, was easily understood, neither awkward nor American. It sat as easily as a hammock stretched between two pines, swaying gently from east to west, responsive to the slightest breeze.

EARLIEST MEMORY

The first thing I can remember is water -- not a lake

or river but the rising level of it in the bathtub, the untroubled

sheen of its surface splashing over the lip of porcelain,

below which many imaginary explorers went in search of

new worlds, new creatures, new routes of escape.

I am holding my favorite rubber alligator, the one I will

soon bring with me to foster care. But not just yet.

I have locked the door, but cannot remember

doing so. I can hear voices calling on the other side,

going back and forth, but do not answer.

I like the hum and gurgle of the water. I like the quiet.

But my older sister, convinced that I am drowning,

has scaled the creaking fire escape and kicked in

the window with her flimsy summer sandals, throwing

shards of glass across the smooth tiled floor.

They are like small jewels, aquarium green at their edges;

I want to pick them up and turn them in my hands.

We are fine, but we are both in trouble now.

Though our mother does not stir from the sanctuary of

her television-blue room, the permanent dusk she cultivates,

and does not bother to unlock her door. It is not time

for us to break that door in, its frame dangling

like a broken cross, nails bent downward. Not just yet.

For now, she stays in bed as though tethered there,

drifts in an ocean that is not quite oblivion,

steered by starlight we can neither follow nor understand.

We are fine, we are; but we will be in trouble soon.

ON THE RURAL ROUTE

 

We arrived in the heat-thrum of summer

without warning, two young towheaded aliens from

the land of housing projects and junk yards

commandeered as playgrounds, spent the newly

lengthening days wandering, seeking out box turtles

and toads, garter snakes, plucking fat shining ticks

and the dark tongues of slugs from our sunburned arms

and legs, setting out on small, rickety boats, each

painted a different shade of ever-peeling blue,

puffy orange life vests smelling of must,

of those thick, watery seasons long since passed.

In the winter months, the school bus sometimes

could not get through, and the snowplows were slow

to find us, scraping their stubborn way up that

narrow curve of road to our small scattering

of cabins barely visible, the deep-frozen lake on one

side and the deep hibernating fields on the other,

furrows grown hard as gravestone beneath.

The small black-and-white TV was mostly snow

as well, only one local channel's signal strong enough

to reach our clothes-hanger antenna, giving us

the news we could easily see for ourselves.

The weighted sky hung low, the white earth rising

to meet it, growing closer from all directions,

while all else in the world became hopelessly far away,

our lessons for the day stretched out before us,

waiting to be written, before the early fall of dark.