Le départ

Quelle est la couleur de mes jours, tu me demande ? Depuis que tu es parti ils sont sans couleur... celle des foins séchés au plus sévère du soleil, du fourrage pour le bétail à  l'odeur de la terre moisie - oui, c'est ça : mes jours ensevelis, ils attendent que tu vienne les déterrées et leur donner de la couleur aussi vif que le soleil rose-orange qui se couche sur le champ d'aôut.

folktale

Once upon a time in a faraway land,

there was a girl whose mother loved her.

When the girl was only two, her mother died

in childbirth. The father sent the baby

to his wife’s sister in a nearby village –  

a widow with two daughters. He married her,

and brought home a stepmother

who locked his girl in the broom closet.

The father who had borne wounded soldiers

through streams of bullets to the trains,

too weak to defend his daughter.

To a land that promised peace,

the girl’s family wore old stains.

Found new broom closets.

Leaving her beloved mother beneath the violets.

Plunging hands into fresh soil, the girl grew tomatoes 

and tenderness. Two years of her mother’s love was enough.

In years to come, in this new land,

there will be a girl whose grandmother loved her.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

The goose that laid the egg lies flattened on the flat

gravelled ledge overhanging the door to the building.

A hard bed for birth. The gander stakes out space

in the featureless parking lot from where he guards

goose and egg. The shining oval is not golden;

it is white and large and holds within its fragile skin

the future. The door opens: Two children and a senior

with the slow pace of Parkinsons come through

and do not  see the goose that laid the egg.

The gander, worried, will keep watch until

the eggs break open the way morning breaks

through darkness and reveals to all (children,

dreaming chocolate eggs, unsteady seniors,

all anxious geese)  the first gold streaks of day

Hey bro

Do you remember when you called my cat Tristan a little nasal mist?

Remember those matching Smurf shirts and horrid orange fleece jackets Mom sewed us, so she couldn’t lose us in the crowd?

Remember the Christmas I gave you chicken pox? The summer camp where we discovered ring worm, deer ticks, impetigo?

The way I risked my life on the swing set to put on a circus show for you? The roads we built in sand? Did you know that the day you put the El Camino in gear and we could have crashed through Oma’s wall, I didn’t stop you because I thought something interesting might finally happen to us?

Remember the times I held you on that rocking horse? I’d get bored and leave, and you’d keep rocking that plastic tail into the floor till you fell asleep. You never fell off.

Remember my Go, go, go! when you ran the hundred metre? You even let me put my arm around you when you won gold.

Remember how we kept A Small World After All spinning, long after leaving Disney? How many Fisher Price record players did we bust? I had a wicked air guitar to I love bananas. I loved the way you stuck out your tongue when you laughed.

Do you remember the rules: how many times we had to knock the punching clown, orbit the dehumidifier, and land on the Rebounder to be crowned king? What was our victory song?

How you beamed when you got your first lawnmower and gave me a business card for Chad’s Lawn Care. The way you kissed your fingers like an Italian chef when you fried me perogies.

Remember that I’ll always be three years older, but you’re ten times stronger. On that note, remember I’m sorry for that time I pushed your head onto the linoleum like a Weeble. Remember I was three.

Remember: a man in a dream once asked if I’d trade you for a puppy, and I said yes and then I cried until I woke up because I missed you.

Remember when Daddy bought the town’s first camcorder and we saw ourselves on television. We made click noises with our tongues and pressed our camera-shaped Lego to the screen, capturing our moment.

The Barrens

redux

In the barrens

Nothing grows

But silence.

Roots can't find

Their way

Through crusted earth,

Skin so thinned

It's thick with armour -

Spring buds locked beneath

The invisible, impassable,

Where no sun or rain

Can find them.

The arctic tundra,

Quiet, desolate,

Beautifully barren.

My womb is barren

Also, where In the dark

things grow unreserved,

Fighting their way through

Thick, obstinate walls with

Corkscrew determination.

No seeds no fish no buds -

Still, it mothers and feeds

And imagines beauty.

This is spring, too

We wake up to white flakes
on the windows, an absurdity of snow
on emerging leaves, grass-blades
vivid against the wet stuff still drifting down.
White-throated sparrows, knee-deep in it,
dip their striped heads to the ground.
Robins run on yellow feet, thrushes
with plumped-up feathers
peck for whatever they can find.
It's sure to melt tomorrow
but they've got to eat today.
We step out the door, fluffed up with sweaters
and jackets against the chill. Past the birds,
still busy. We're not looking for example or
allegory, just stumping off toward whatever's
just got to be done, snow or no snow.

Family Ties (a complete rewrite of Around the Bend from May 2)

Every day after school, I turned

on the TV with my brothers

Alex Keaton and Mike Seaver. We could

take anything that comes our way.

When the screen winked off,

nobody asked me

What you talkin’ ’bout?

or yelled Goodnight Ma

through open windows

while the porch lights hummed.

The first time you

brought me home to loud turkey

dinners, your brothers’ bad

puns, your sisters’ hugs, your mother

patting my behind,

the show went on and on,

and I cried for what was possible.