WHERE THE OLD HOUSE STOOD

 

After your funeral I walked, by memory, to the old house,

as if I might somehow find you lingering there,

as if the years had waited all this time, unchanging.

But the old house, dear brother, was nowhere to be found.

A new one stood in its place -- charming and respectable, freshly

painted, with an impossibly green and manicured lawn.

Nothing you would have recognized. Only the trees

seemed familiar, the old and stately oaks grown older still,

the fan dance of their shadows wavering at my feet.

They would know you, I'm sure, as the lake water would,

as I barely had time to before you were gone.

We are becoming part of the past, dear brother,

a world which we had no idea we were creating as kids;

and it's something I can just about see if I narrow my eyes,

the way a rough sketch hidden beneath a painting

can be seen when held up to a particular kind of light.

Would you mourn this loss with me, I wonder.

Or would you perhaps be grateful, as I am, that no one now

can sleep where we slept, dream where we dreamed;

no one will smoke unfiltered Camels on the slanted roof,

the chilly autumn sunlight looking on in silence.

Those rooms where we laughed, where we fought, talking

long into the night, stand within these walls of words --

every door and window intact, every creak and groan of that

shifting house familiar. It all belongs to us now.

BEGINNINGS

 

We are lined up quietly against the wood-paneled wall of the hallway, my older siblings and I, as if we are under inspection, or about to give some sort of recital for which we have forgotten to rehearse. But this is not a performance. Certainly nothing that could be prepared for. This is the moment our mother is being wheeled out on a stretcher, hovering somewhere between this world and the other, a bleached white blanket thrown over her, not unlike the heavenly robes in my illustrated children's Bible. This is the decision she has made, for reasons we cannot fathom. I am the youngest, and therefore the closest to her face as it passes. I want to say something -- anything -- want to reach out, but I have only been instructed to stand here, and to remain as out of the way as possible. The EMTs speak rapidly in their practiced medical code, all abstract phrases, acronyms, and numbers. None of it sounds clear. Time makes no logical sense in these moments, everything rushing by in a whir, then to an almost excruciating slow motion. The wheels of the stretcher squeak and clack in rhythm, the screen door slaps open and the ambulance departs, its siren spilling out in all directions. Then, there is only the silence between us, strange but certain, as if it has been waiting all this time to fill each corner of these rooms. Someone will come to check on us, they must. But for now, we are five kids suddenly on our own. Our mother is gone, and will be gone for some time. In some ways, she will never return.

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.