Worry


I step off every curb assuming
the car won’t brake for the stop sign

I imagine the nurse rifling through my pockets
for a phone number, wonder if you’ll be home
when she calls, if you’ll crumple

I think about all the things
I haven’t written down

How lucky you are to trust
that I’ll always make it home

To believe the plane will be righted
before impact, that an absent wallet
was tucked away for safe-keeping by a stranger

But that just means I have to fret double-time,
carry the gut-twisting weight for both of us

Sweet nothing


That time you were in the hospital
coiled in a nautilus of pain,
my palm too warm for your forehead
(before the morphine shot
you through with magical sleep),
I wanted, for the first time, to call you
darling sweetheart honey dear

But they didn’t sit comfortably
on my tongue, the situation too dire
for twirling cliches in front of you
And a decade in too late to christen you
with some pastry-sweet endearment

So I sat on the cracked lip of a plastic chair –
even my weight on the mattress hurt you –
and repeated your name,
oh your name oh your name oh your name
investing it with more tenderness
than it had ever held

Comparative reading


Too serious for the frivolity, the gawdy posters
of the children’s department, you spent hours alone
with the comfort-smell of dust and dry paper,
the wood polish and antique waft
of the reference section of Cornish Library
You carefully turned huge atlas pages,
traced coastlines with your small fingers
Checked out only bird guides, returned them
when you’d memorized wingspans and breeding ranges

Meanwhile, in the bright air conditioning of the Westwood branch,
I bee-lined for the candy-covered laughs
of Bruno and Boots, Judy Blume,
searched the shelves for any crisp new book
(the thrill to being first, ever, to peel open the cover,
wolf down those pristine words)
I hefted stacks of paperbacks on the counter
and waited for a librarian, round or thin, to nod her approval

You chose your own adventure from the saffron frames
of National Geographic – the more remote the better –
and I watched for the latest issue of Owl,
which my Mom would prop in the front window,
so I could see it as I rounded the corner home for lunch

Your family had Collier’s Encycolpedia and when I tell you
we had World Book I hear the old jealousy in your voice,
know how you yearned for the luscious colour plates,
the strata of clear plastic that built the shocking entry for Human Body

But we were both drawn to the flame red braids of Anne Shirley
You’re still proud of the softcover you brought home as a classroom prize
and I tell you about the thick early edition my sisters and I read and reread,
the soft pages that also bear my Mom’s young fingerprints

Youngests


Both youngest of three, neither of us has known
the weight of expectation, of leadership,
nor the glory of their fulfillment

Ground broken for us, curfews already eroded
But with a price: a lifetime at the end of a pointed finger,
an older sibling always claiming: not fair

We were the lookouts, the stoolies, the fall guys
More mascot than member of the team,
as easily blamed as ignored

Disenfranchised, we were forever too small,
too late, too slow, too far behind
and never given the chance to catch up

Sequestered to bed so early, born so late,
we missed everything good,
stood on the outside of every joke

But we learned how to split the vote
To see the warning signs and defuse a fight,
create diversion with jokes or tears

And even if we can’t make a decision between us,
there is room in our home for two youngest children
and our easy love of hugs, our sweet uncertain need to please

Provenance


You came from a neighbourhood of single moms
Just one whole home on your paper route,
one kid in your class whose parents were married –
and to each other – so you made fun of him for it

It was a land of hand-me-downs from your brother
and sister, Sunday mornings sullied with chores,
a price tag on every broken juice glass, every little-kid goof

You had to teach yourself to ride a bike,
didn’t feel a steady hand under the seat, the shocking delight
when you realized it had disappeared

You never came home from school
to an unlocked door, the smell of peanut butter cookies
just pulled from the oven but off-limits until dessert

And yet much the same as the world I knew:
library books,and straight-A report cards,
that grade six lunch hour when the Challenger
cracked blue sky into three uneven pieces

But when I have to explain to you the concept
of a birthday party loot bag – candy and flimsy plastic trinkets –
I am at once thankful and ashamed
of my two-car, two-parent childhood

Rebel


When you were ten you rebelled against your mother,
started calling her mom
instead of the first name on which she insisted
as part of some new-fangled parenting technique

(You’re still the only one
brave or sentimental enough
to call her that)

You must have needed to plant a steady claim
after the house shifted, family set adrift
To clarify that you were not colleagues or buddies,
but blood-bound, inextricable

Or maybe you just wanted a mom
because all the other kids at school had one

She must have picked and frowned
at the soft, common rank you assigned,
tried to shrug off the title like a well-meant cardigan
tossed over shoulders she preferred bare

But she acceded and even now
she signs every postcard
Love, Mom.

I’ll be out late



There’s a spider in the bathroom
under an overturned glass

I hope your day was OK
That your phone didn’t ring,
that your lunch was delicious
and that you had a small bright window
in your afternoon to watch birds
whirling like kids on a midway

I’ve taken the car and some cash
you left on the dining room table

There’s nothing in the fridge
except beer and mustard
and a jar of slimy capers –
did you know those little buggers expire?

The weeds need mowing
and you’ll see my socks
stuck to the kitchen floor

And if you fall asleep before I get home,
watch for my kisses in your dreams

Missing dinner


We’ve sat thousands of times
opposite one another at the dinner table –
sock-feet softly squabbling over hardwood turf,
arm-wrestling over washing up,
relishing every bite

But tonight, I’ll pick at bland chicken
in a beige banquet room
and you’ll microwave pasta
between periods of the hockey game,
eat it from a bowl on your lap

And I know this is just one small meal,
that we’ll have years more to savour
But a day doesn’t count unless
I’ve chewed and swallowed it with you

Sweet tooth


It was never a fear of the dark
that kept me awake all those nights
tucked in with a plush honour guard,
nightgown sparking like fireflies
caught in flannel sheets

It was appetite, my sweet baby teeth,
the prospect of being sprung from bed
for a slice of toast and jam

I prodded my mind with stories
pinched from books or lame TV sitcoms
and wrote myself into the script
Repeated each scene until it ran smooth,
my brain humming, eyes unblinking

I waited for my mom’s long, slim silhouette
against the glowing cream of the hall light,
for her pronouncement that it was very late,
that the only possible cure for my sleeplessness
was hot crisp bread smeared thick with strawberry

A ten o’clock permit for the kitchen rare
as a dollar on the sidewalk,
mythical as a third cookie for dessert
But the trying was routine
as brushing teeth, looking under the bed

And even now when I lie in listless limbo,
regretting all those hours of sleep I snubbed,
I still crave that wholewheat grail

Improper


Your name is teddy-bear huggable, goofball loveable,
bobbing buoyant on a page, jaunty in the mouth
I love to see it in your precise printing,
or arial bold in my inbox

But when I watch you lean through viscous din,
your lips brushing a bewildered ear,
I curse your mother, her cruel creativity

Two simple syllables, common everyday English,
bring panic to an unfamiliar tongue
So many nervous attempts swallowed
by small apologetic coughs
And spelling it doesn’t help

I’ve adapted your shrugged explanation: hippie parents
and try to remember how it has made you
singular, patient, unwilling to apologize
for anything beyond your control

Quiet


So often there’s just the click and whoosh
of electric heat, small taps at a keyboard
and I catch myself frowning at the interruption
of your hardwood footstep-creak overhead

You say our house is too quiet,
in a way that makes it sound like my fault,
and I remind you I grew up in a home
still as a museum: clocks ticked, pages turned,
all sound absorbed by thick wall-to-wall
and antique furniture
No one sang along to the radio
or called room to room
We saved laughter for company

Your homes were filled with boys
and their rough-housing, Beatles records and bickering
And raised voices didn’t signal a fight –
hot tears and a car charging down the driveway –
just competition for a single mom’s attention

But now you’ve grown used to my kind of silence
I see you startle when the phone rings,
when a fork clatters on the counter
The heavy metal pound from the band next door
tenses your shoulders high as mine
And when Gary across the street
revs and revs and revs that rusted truck –
gas pedal to pavement and still he stalls it –
you also clench your teeth

There are times when quiet spooks me too,
just the two of us to fill all these rooms,
and I rearrange the pots and pans,
think of something to talk about

Dear Trapper,

Why were you only a sidekick?

You had leading man chops – top notch chest-cutter,
robust frame under your yellow housecoat
and that goofy, toothy grin, that ragged tangle of curls
Toss a football around the dusty compound
and your bicep-pulse would draw nurses from the showers
Your bittersweet brown eyes deeper, darker against the bleach of scrubs,
must have caused a thousand dropped instruments

Always in Hawkeye’s shadow even though you were as tall,
as quick and exact with tongue or scalpel
Relegated to vice-president, runner-up, right hand man
or was it just that you weren’t so thirsty for attention,
didn’t need a spotlight to see your own worth?

I always appreciated your quiet, reliable grit,
the backbone it takes to be second banana

Yours truly.

Frank,

It wasn’t the North Koreans, the stingy supply clerks at HQ,
some leather-assed general miles from the front
You were the enemy – our enemy

In the war within the war, combat in the Swamp and Mess,
you fell for all the goofy ambushes, lost every battle of wits
but were saved by all those army boots you licked

You were a doctor for the money, the golf club prestige
but wouldn’t recognize your own lily liver on an X-ray

It’s taken years of loathing you to finally understand
the purpose you served: we need to hate

You made it easy, guilt-free, with your yes-man salutes,
your snivelling quibbles and your starchy manner
We laughed at your weekly comeuppance but imagined
a schoolyard bully, a fawning colleague, a prissy sister

I’ve tried not to see the human in you, not to admit what irritates most
are the traits I share: twitchy anxiety, cry baby tendencies,
tongue tied too tight to respond to any smart remark
And the way I must come off: fussy and humourless

But the difference is, Ferret-face, you deserved it

From.

Dear Radar,

You were the Korean War Cassandra, except that everyone believed
when you said Choppers. Incoming.
weary voice older than your Iowa innocence
You bore all that bad news on your skimpy frame

Today you’d be diagnosed with exhaustion, army fatigue
Bed beside the only phone, your sleep must have been piecemeal,
eyelids fluttering at all those midnight flash-lit sneaks
into medical records, liquor cabinets
And still you were up every morning to bungle the bugling

They stunted your growth: everyone’s younger brother, cuddly confidante
Your suspended childhood their link to the pristine,
before gore and grief numbed run-on days

Were you playing along – the teddy bear, grape Nehis
just part of a greenhorn schtick?
Because I know you were wise, even wily –
that Jeep you mailed home piece by careful piece –
though skittish around women

But when I imagine you stateside, after, you’re not anyone’s pet
You’re worldly, capable, standing taller in your small shoes

Sincerely.

Dear Henry,

I still blanch at any mention of the Sea of Japan
Your primetime death the tragedy that dimmed my childhood,
taught me the word injustice, and its blood-bitter taste

I’ve chosen to remember you as you were,
an uneasy leader, itchy in uniform, in charge, in decision,
hiding that big heart under your fishing vest

You had your own wobbly way of making them fall in

Your replacement, Potter, a bureaucratic wonk,
didn’t have your laugh lines, your cornball command

I’ve long-since forgiven your infidelities,
all those whippet-thin nurses with their deft hands,
And I’m sure Lorraine has too.

Sayonara.

Dear Hot Lips,

I suppose I should call you Major Houlihan,
or at least Margaret, but the truth is
you never quite commanded my respect
Even though I admire flinty ambition,
any woman with those army brass balls

It couldn’t have been easy to stand that high
and mighty ground when every joke was on you,
and no sisters to lean on in the officer’s mess

But Frank Burns? That quivering, chinless priss?
Was it your shared hard-on for rigid discipline
or his limp submission?

I’ve always hoped it was simple human need:
the comfort of any body when the shelling is close,
heavy choppers on the way

Still, there was a time I’d picture that olive drab turtleneck
clinging to my own some-day curves
And I still find a certain strident femininty
in snug green trousers and combat boots

But I wonder, was it enough for you – or did you wish
to hold that scalpel rather than slap it into a man’s gloved hand?

And I’m curious to know if you ever stroll instead of march,
unzip your face into genuine smile
Because that time Henry kissed you – full and sudden on the mouth –
I saw you let go of the wheel, just for a moment,
stunned by the thrill of freedom

Sincerely.

10pm


All those restless years of lying in bed
with newly-minted teeth, laughter
and the MASH theme rerunning up the stairs
A bedtime timeline that hived off the youngest child –
whispering spelling homework, petty playground anxieties,
into the hall-light half-dark

How I’d wish for the hot stab of an earache,
some small latenight affliction, to admit me
to that wonderland of big sisters and grown ups,
the bag of jujubes passed along the chesterfield
and Hawkeye and Hot Lips with their khaki slapstick

Even now I still hear the phantom:
da-daaaah de de de daah-daah
But there’s no 4077 on channel 12
only cheap Hollywood gossip, reality plastic surgery
There’s no magic left in 10pm, just weeknight ache,
the sticky littered sidewalk after a parade’s gone by

Dear Hawkeye,

By now you’ll have noticed I didn’t marry you,
despite all those years spent planning –
Monday to Friday at 10pm –
in the basement of a suburban bungalow far from the front,
from the wounded and the blood and the tattle-tale Majors

I know you won’t be jealous to hear
that my husband is no crackerjack doctor
trapped in the khaki hell of meatball surgery
but he has a steady hand, tender bedside manner

Sure, he can’t mix a gut-rot martini straight from the still,
let alone toss it back in one easy swallow,
but he makes me laugh like you always have,
until I’m ready for triage:
face in need of sutures, belly of bandaging
(And he does it without a laughtrack)

Furthermore, I’m confident he won’t junk me
for some bombshell nurse
And I could never be as certain with you –
lanky you, with that rakish cowboy hat,
that rightous talent and appetite for women
How could I trust your squint-eyed grin?

And if this news dissapoints you,
please know I’ll never forget
your stories of Crabapple Cove,
those hijinks in the Swamp,
And that time – do you remember? –
you were so brave and handsome,
cavalier and cracking wise in your unbuckled helmet,
it’s the standard by which I’ve measured all other men

Love, always.

Named


I still don’t know why I laughed all those years ago
when you told me what your last name had been
until age eight when your parents split

Maybe because it lacked the snug precision
of the one I’ve always seen you in –
your name now a perfect black t-shirt and jeans
While the other seemed tweed-scratch
and bulky, musty with old country
Before I knew the man who brought it to Canada, at 18,
buzzed with the thrill of typing it under a newspaper headline
Who gave it to you, your brother and sister,
never guessing it wouldn’t take root in the new world

After you’d moved and everything settled
you got to make the choice: keep or change
Too young for loyalties, you just liked the tough snap sound
And your mom baked a cake, updated her records with a red pen

When the time came, you knew you couldn’t ask me
to abandon the name I’ve always known
But I never told you I was tempted or that, even now,
like a junior high girl practicing some future signature,
I test its delicious weight on my tongue

Rehash


The movie scene: two old men
smoking on a park bench
pokes shadows of memory
And I try again to explain déjà vu to you
without saying this conversation is an example
because I know you won’t laugh

Too bewildered by the illogical,
its unnerving presence in your home,
you – who can answer any question
instantly yes or no –
tell me I must have seen the clip
before

There’s no point describing the eerie echo
and the wash of vague recognition
becomes just another of the things I know
and you won’t believe
on scientific principle
An addition to the dowry
of mysterious truths I’ve brought to you:
how to get blood out of a white t-shirt,
how long meat keeps in the fridge,
how to sew a button,
how magic can flicker, unbidden,
through the brain


(Marika, I liked your button-sewing poem so much I had to have one of my own. Thanks for the inspiration!)