Memoriam

          for Barbara

Today we gather to honor the woman who was my aunt.
I am here to add to the chorus singing her praises.
Wife and mother, nurturing people and plants, decorator par excellence,
Shopkeeper and more, she did everything well.

It is strange for me to speak of her as a separate person.
To me she has always been there together with her husband
And I marvel at their sixty years happily married.
Not once did I hear a hint of discord or annoyance between them.

I know that there were difficult times for her and for him
Growing up and then making their way as young adults and later in life.
It was not a bed of roses, not at all, but I heard never a complaint.
Their love for each other and for their children made a safe haven in their home.

As an adult I would seek them out, awestruck by their love,
Grateful for their acceptance of my faults and their support and encouragement,
As I am sure my cousins their children likewise received.
She will live on in our memory as an exceptionally good person.

Barbara, I can hear your voice. You are speaking kindly, affectionately.
You say “Charlie,” beginning a sentence. Can you all hear it? "Charlie."
This room is filled with love for you because of the love you gave us
Like some multiplier effect for the currency of the heart.

We are your legacy in the way you touched our lives
And showed us by your example, bearing up and carrying on.
As we go on with our lives and are good to each other,
So we honor your life among us. Thank you for the sweetness you brought us.

The Quickening

The declination of the sun tips towards us again
As February moves towards March
And the ducks are soon active on the mill pond
Before the ice has completely melted away.

The drakes beset the ducks when spring is still an idea
Imagined in the angle of the sunlight.
The predatory snapping turtle still sleeps in the mud below,
For fifty years or more rising later in the spring to devour the ducklings.

As I imagine the idea of someone new, of an intimate relationship,
As if we have lived shared experiences in a parallel past,
As if she knows my heart and I hers. It is possible.
After all, spring is on the way.

She has her pond, too, not the same pond, but not so different,
Left there by the receding glacier as part of that Long Island,
Part of that huge pile of billions of round stones that is the island now.
On her pond the swans nest and lose their cygnets to another large turtle.

Her swan is not the lustful Zeus swan who raped Leda.
Her swan is female, tenderly hatching the eggs,
As if Leda was transformed into a swan by the experience,
And her offspring each spring tragically get devoured, one by one.

And what would bring us together now, more or less sixty years old?
There is the bittersweet sorrow of our losses, each our own.
There is the eye for fleeting beauty in the world around us.
There is the dream of a companion’s embrace.

For her the stars and stones somehow conflate. I do not understand.
I think the stones break bones and words can hurt, too.
I think there is deep pain there but it is not my metaphor.
At times she is too abstract for me.

A humanist feminist: that’s good for me in theory.
It’s not an intellectual act, though, and not an act of will.
What the heart feels is like a dream, not a rational argument,
And trust and courage are matters of the heart, mine and hers.

receding ice

alone with my thoughts

          for Charlie


I am alone with my thoughts in the predawn hours
Waiting for your call to say it’s over.
Three days ago you called to say she went downhill fast
And only a day or two are left in hospice.

She can’t speak, she does not recognize anyone.
Everyone is at her bedside, you and your five children,
Saying your good-byes to one so very dear to you,
And I make sure I have my black tie ready.

I think of your children gathered there, my cousins.
What a blessing to have many close brothers and sisters,
Your brood your legacy, every one adored by you both,
But one is my special favorite.

I remember her giddy girlish antics so many years ago.
It was my first halting boyhood crush.
Our lives lived apart, she alone for many years now,
And I imagine us revisiting a happy time, enjoying living out our years together.

I remember the last hours for my mother so many years ago
And there’s something in that picture I see this morning that escaped me then,
Me in such pain then, numb with overwhelming grief.
I don’t see you. Were you not there?

No one was by my mother’s side. She died alone.
We never said good bye. I saw her last in the hospital
Perhaps a month before she died, my father still pretending
To us and her that she was not about to die.

My step-mother-to-be moved in when the final wait began.
Were you keeping your distance? Or kept at a distance?
How awkward it was for my father to tell me what I already knew
Taking me to talk in the darkness of the back yard, touching me.

He had never touched me gently. “Who is this man?” I thought,
“The one I know glares disapproval and stings with his words.”
But I digress into my own inner void symbolized by her closed casket
As if that would keep our feelings sealed inside.

How could two brothers be so different, you and he?
I admire you all the more for it. When you called me,
We did not speak of my Quagga poem I wrote for you.
I was afraid somehow it had offended you.

The next day I got your letter thanking me for it.
Thanking and thanking, such effusive praise!
Telling me how it touched and pleased you and your true love
In your final days together.

Thank you for your approval.
Thank you for including me in the large universe of your love.
Hear my heartfelt wish that only goodness and light
Shall be with you all the days of your life.