Dear Prudence

Our home phone only receives calls from robots
and my mother,
plus the occasional call from my alma mater to ask for money, and for some reason from people thinking they've reached WalMart as they ask for help
in hardware.

Lately a lonely man has started leaving messages.
I've come home from work to his voice on our machine,
the hello this is our house with our name message,
ignored,
more than a hint he's got the wrong number.

Hi, Prudence,we met at a meeting a while back and I'm just wondering if you'd like to go with me to a meeting or meet there or

Hi, Prudence, I've called before and I haven't heard back but you left me your number to call and we met at a meeting at the shelter and I'm thinking of going to one this

Hi Prudence, I'm calling again. Why won't you call me back? You said to call and I am but you

One day I came home as he was leaving his voice in my kitchen,
as I set down my purse and hugged my dog as she climbed up my legs,
happy to see me after the day apart.

Hi Prudence.  I'm calling you.  Are you not calling because you think I was drinking? I wasn't. It was just soda in my mouth. I was swallowing when I left that message I wasn't drunk.  You said I should call. Why won't you talk to me? Please.  I just want to go to a meeting. I

I reached for the phone. Hello, this isn't Prudence. Prudence isn't at this number.

Really? Really? He doesn't believe me.

Really. This isn't Prudence. You've dialed the wrong number.

Oh. OK.  I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

I felt then that I'd abandoned this lonely man,
leaving him with nothing but a piece of worn paper
with Prudence's number smudged,
or written wrong
on purpose.

I should have said I'd go.

New

I feel it now, the door opening.

Today I'm sitting in a coffee shop with my daughter, Christmas carols play over the speaker.
She is finishing her school work and I am surrounded by latte I never order, my notebook of plans, and a book we're reading together waits in my bag.

I am so happy.

I have no plans. I have a thousand plans.

I'll write each day
I'll walk each day
I'll take time to be in nature.
I'll not do just the to dos.
I'll try the new,
I'll take time.
I'll do more than catch up.
I'll plan my garden.
I'll spend an afternoon and dig and move plants.
I'll be in touch with friends.
I'll be with friends.
I'll travel.
I'll cook and bake.
I'll live for a month in Paris, in Boston, in London.
I'll eat from markets and cafes.
I'll spend time by the sea in a cottage and will walk along the beach every day. September would be fine.
I'll spend time by the lake listening to the loons.
I'll take music history classes.
I'll learn sign language.
I won't learn sign language.
I'll speak French better.
I'll preserve and share my father's photos.
I'll take my daughters on trips. Art retreats. Overseas. Overnights.

I'll drive in a convertible with my husband along the California coast.

I'll knit.

I'll read. 

"Open you the east door and let the new year in!"

Two Days Apart

We'd call him today on his birthday, two days before mine.
I don't know what I found to say all those years ago
to a man I saw for 3 weeks a year
who lived 14 states away,
who was 66 years older than I,
but we'd turn over the egg timer and we'd call.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you, dear, he'd say,
dee-ah he'd say,
then nothing I remember,
then my parents would talk
and then he'd say
In two days it will be my turn to call you.

He'd call.
We'd chuckle over the fact we'd just spoken
two days before.
Happy Birthday, dee-ah,
Thank you, Grandpa,
and then nothing I remember.

I remember more as we grew older together.
There was more than just the yearly trip to the country general store
where he'd buy me stationery or pens.
I'd helped him move from his apartment where he'd lived with my grandmother
into a new one, the first place he every decorated on his own.
He knew my young children. He stayed in my house
when we had a heat wave and the fans whirred in the living room.
We played gin and he let me win. We wrote letters.
I brought him to the hospital when he'd come to visit and my parents
had gone to dinner.
I flew to be with him when he died.

Today they pin poppies to lapels,
and put flags on headstones.
Today, I just think of him
and imagine he'll call.

Trespass

No dogs allowed but I brought her
and we walked past all the Our Town people
Merrill Walker Smith Morse Peabody
here lies with his wife
and the babies who lived for just months
with small angels with
tilted heads beside them.
The school bus drove past,
and leaves softly fell,
and we shuffled through.
The sun set beyond the yellow maples
and the man played golf on the other side
of the headstones,
hitting the ball and walking slowly
on the low lawn.

I found someone I knew.
She was who I would want to be,
generous and respected with only kind words
and gifts and an easy smile given to anyone.
I met her when I was just married,
at a seasonal museum
where a very old docent and I would sit and wait for cars to pull up,
for them to ask about the family,
the mother and husband,
the boy who was shot, or shot the mother.
I don't remember.

She came to the house to organize a tag sale
for the Colonial Dames.
I'd never heard of Colonial Dames
or a tag sale.
Women who had families
who had been on the Mayflower
brought antiques.
Not musty clothes from their basements or Avon cologne bottles shaped like cars or
record albums like Petula Clark or the Bee Gees. These were
ink wells and trivets and andirons and willow ware and tapestries.

She gave me
a china cup so thin I could see my fingers through it
and a candy dish from France
and an emerald green marble desk set she said
I was to give to my husband for our anniversary.

She'd lost her grandson to AIDS
when it was new and he was young,
and she made a home for young men dying.
And she wore a feather boa
And she invited me to her house for tea.

I walked past her today
where she lies with her husband,
and school children ride by,
and dogs chase squirrels,
and the sun lowers itself
into the ground.

Picking a Fight

She’d invited me to go apple picking so I picked her up between our houses in a lot by the highway and we drove the sideroads to an orchard we’d been to with our own children and had come to from different ways but not this.  She changed into sneakers from her dress shoes as I drove and she struggled to lace and bend while belted into her seat and we talked about later that day how she had plans to meet with friends and I had to be home to do something I don’t remember since I don’t really think I had plans. We had our windows down half way to let crisp air in that smelled of fires and cider. Our hair whirled and tangled and my nose began to run and I wasn’t sure I knew how to get to the orchard from the lot in a town that wasn’t mine and she had no idea how to help since she had no sense of direction.  A handpainted finger pointed us down toward Hansel’s abutting the dirt road which we followed and pulled into a spot that wasn’t a parking spot the rest of the year but just a place with grass and few rocks and apple trees all around. The woman asked how much we planned to pick and we chose a peck since the apples looked just about ready but not quite. Then we walked down an aisle of trees and we each plucked an apple or two to plunk into the basket we’d set between us on the ground. Plunk. Plunk plunk. Gentle with apples, they bruise.

A smattering of families passed by us on their way to the trees they imagined held riper redder juicier fruit. We stopped near a tree so laden with fruit that the branches sagged close to the ground. We each found an apple to pick that was mostly green with a brushstroke of red from where it looked up to the sun. We stood by the basket. We bit into our apples. Warm. Sharp.

Leaves rustling in the wind.

Bite.

I don’t understand why you said, how we let, we had promised we’d never but I haven’t seen you in months. I never meant why did you? Well it sure seemed so to me at least that’s what I heard whether you meant to or not. I would never do that but you did and we said we would never and now we’re no better than her since we promised we’d never get here. Then you said and it hurt and I’d never say that to our daughters so why? I thought when you said, no I didn’t mean it that way but that’s how it came across. And we’re here. Bite. Quiet. Bite.

We were getting chilled. There weren’t enough red ones to fill our basket. We were done looking. We split them into two plastic bags I had in my trunk. got back in the car and drove back to her car, down the bumpy dirt road.

Yiskor

They all died in the fall.
Was it the thought and worry of winter and the dark mornings,
the quiet of birds gone, or is that just in poetry?

All those people who loved me and who loved us
and who lived days and jobs and kept
homes and summer places
and gardened and took care
of people
and ate cornflakes and
spaghetti and meatballs
and borscht
and called friends and golfed and cooled
off in the lake and smelled of
tobacco and maple
and gardenia and cologne
and could build and comfort and play gin
and bake and sing old songs
and they held my children and
took care of my children
and never saw my children
grow.

We give their names to our children
and teach them remnants of stories and songs
and tell them how loved they'd be.

I remember them so sweetly today.

Grandma: 9/10/82
Grandpa: 10/8/94
Dad: 9/4/03
Ray: 9/15/07
Margie: 9/24/14

Last First Day of School

Goodbye, Target, KMart, WalMart,
Goodbye, grocery stores in strange cities, to buy mac and cheese and granola bars and goldfish and cold medicine,
Goodbye, Staples with overpriced binders and ethernet cords we never needed but bought because they said we needed them, and XL sheets made to fit XL beds they only make for college dorms
and toiletry baskets new each year because the old one
broke
got sticky
is gross
got lost
the handle comes off
isn't mine. You never bought me one.
And surge protector cords.
And Rubbermaid carriers and
stuffed animals being transported to sit on dorm beds
and graphing calculators never needed after one year
and wide ruled paper and pencil boxes and colored pencils and
so many folders (I have an orange one and a red one and a blue one and a green one and I need one more and they don't have any other colors.)
and lunch boxes that will smell bad by October
and juice boxes and fruit rollups
and new shoes because the old ones stopped fitting last week
and new clothes and first day outfits and meeting the bus
and snacks after school as my children run down the road.
Goodbye, children, running down the road.
Twenty two years of school,
of first days and last days,
and here is today, the last first one,
Goodbye, first days
and all the days that followed,
Goodbye my children,
I will miss you.

Stop this train

I'm up!
Tonight because of a load of laundry being run
at 11:30,
last night because of the dog scratching her ear
and I got up and put her on the kitchen counter and poured a shot glass of vinegar water in it.
The night before because where are the keys? Where are the keys?
wherearethekeyswherearethekeys.
And every night John Mayer plays as soon as I open my eyes,
a concert just for me and he's waiting for only me
so he can play just one song over and over.
Stop This Train
don't hunh hunh I' m moving in,
hunh hunh
Stop this train.
My sheets are not crisp.
Everything is so sticky!
The washing machine is not white noise.
I'm so hot!
We need milk. I hope there's enough for coffee.
Does the corroding pipe in the garage hold up the whole house?
What if I'd never noticed?
Would he have noticed?
Once in a while
hunh hunh
I need to eat more fruit. I'll bring raspberries and blueberries tomorrow.
Load
Rinse
Spin
So scared of getting old,
hunh hunh being young.
She's leaving in just a week and a half
I am so sad.
Will John Mayer play every night until I die?
Why does he play every night? Why doesn't he know the words?
Quit snoring!
Never gonna stop this train.
Shut up!
I should get up and read.
The sofa smells like dog.
We should get a new sofa.
I hate my house.
Why do we sleep in this room?
I hate this room.
What is the word, what is the word, what is the word . . .
What the hell am I trying to think of! There is no word, you lunatic!
I am huge.
I need to eat only fruit tomorrow.
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
hunh hunh hunh
Stop this train.

Pattern

I come from a woman who writes, who came from a man who wrote. She's always been clever with words. This isn't mine, it's hers. I found it scrawled on a piece of paper, tucked in between dishes I took from her:

On the back of my dishes
Which I took from my mother
Laying claim long ago
Lest they go to another
Like a sister or daughter
Or heaven forfend
The woman next door
Or the best childhood friend.

The dish on its front
Has a well painted flower
Unknown to my garden
Never seen in my bower
Also starlike shaped dots
Going round the wide brim
They're not to my taste,
They never have been.

Amerescoggin Road

Just 3 roads away is where they began their lives,
the two people who raised me.
They often told the story of this house, their first home.
They had no furniture and their good friends at the top of the road brought chairs
down to their house
every time they entertained.

It's all I know about this place, really,
and now I've found a booklet of 7 photos,
no people,
all bound together,
all the same photo
of the house they lived in
for a year.

My father must have had a reason
to print 7
and bind them in a booklet.
He was always sharing his photos.
Maybe he planned to.

Soon,
when I get up the nerve,
I'll walk over to the house and offer this booklet,
this little bit of history for them to know.
Here, here is your house in 1952.
My parents lived here.
They had no furniture.

He tied feathers together

How can the plane be so light and fly when it's so heavy? He asked his dad.
That's a good question.
I was sure he'd make up an answer for his small child about wind or magic or it just does. Everyone seated around them gave a laugh. How you gonna answer this one, dad?
Good question.  I think you should think about what makes it fly.
I thought it was a good strategy, having been asked questions that required I'd paid attention
or cared
in school.
I think
and I wasn't close enough to hear answer because of the man sitting next to me talking team sport to someone on his phone and the woman across from me talking airport lunch with her husband.
I could hear the boy's younger sister respond
I THINK THE PLANE FLIES
Shh, inside voice,
I THINK THE PLANE
Shh,
i think the plane flies because it goes in the sky.
Me, too.
The man sat on the floor next to his son
who answered him in his inside voice.
The only word of his answer I could hear aside from wings and wind,
the one that stunned me because he knew it.
Momentum.

Fears and To Dos

I will not always see the stars.

I will not always be healthy.

I will not always be able.

Go for 30 minute walk every day.

Farmers market dinner on Saturday.

Menu for week.

Check into health insurance options for post job.

I am afraid for my children, this fragile planet, the anger and stupidity of people.

Set up tutoring time with Rosa.

Check in with a friend a day.

Take Monya to store on Saturday.

Move compost heap.

I am afraid of losing my children.

I will not always hear the peepers.

I am afraid of the dwindling years.

I fear that I’m always counting down the dwindling.

I am afraid of the onset of winter, the end of warmth.

Get furnace cleaned.

Order 2 cords green wood.

Plans once a week with mom.

I am afraid of my fears.

I’m afraid when I think of all I’ll never see, of the shortness of my time. That I’ll never know what happens.

Finish Dad’s photo project.

Finish sweater.

I am afraid of planes dropping out of the sky.

Make reservations.

Where I left him

That summer began with saying goodbye to my father every day.

Every day I parked in the lot, got out of my car, walked across the warm outside, up the stairs to visit.

He might have known me, I wasn't sure. I was sweetheart or dear, and not many others were, so I think he knew.  He couldn't work the TV any longer, the man who once knew science and electronics and taking things apart.  He showed me the cherries from my mother that she'd left him in a plastic cup, or the rose blossom from their garden she'd brought in a parfait glass and had left beside his bed.  He'd tell me his dreams, or his truths.  I'm not sure. He had gone in as himself and ended up missing.

He wanted only hot chocolate, couldn't think of the names of his medicines. He became obsessed with illnesses he didn't have, pieces of his day he couldn't control.  Such a small man then, holding his unsteady self up to the sink, wetting his face as he had for so many thousands of days, shaving the pattern over his stubbled skin his mind could not forget.  Remember when I would shave with you with my little plastic razor? no.  At the lake in the mornings? You'd give me a dollop of shaving cream? no.  I don't remember.  Remember me? Are you there in the mirror? Are you there?

In the middle of summer I found my father. I walked into his room and his eyes awoke and he smiled and knew me and asked what had been going on in the world and how my children were and he knew their names. We laughed and I didn't dare ask too many questions for fear it was all a ruse. He ate the watermelon I'd brought. He drank chocolate milkshakes. He loved me.

Then he was gone again. Sure the man across the way was being sent to the roof to the shredder he said. He's crazy, he said. He can't use his legs so they're sending him upstairs. No, I know! I KNOW! Please, dear. I know. Planning on meeting his friends outside, two floors down, trying to climb out the window to meet them.

I hated those days.  I searched madly for my dad.  He appeared and then left before I could grab on.  I see you! You there?

Watermelon.  It tastes wonderful.  Juice dribbling down his chin.

Watermelon. It tastes like shit! I threw up three times.  Do you see the ceiling? I'm so tired of looking at those lines that cross. That man who was here, they took him to the gas chambers.

This was the best I knew him, my most important memories of him made in sickness.  These were the times where he held me and stared into my eyes and sighed great breaths of pride and love.

And on that last night, the inability to breathe, the gurgle in his voice, making sounds like a deep sea diver, the smile on his face, the happiness that we were all with him as if he'd invited us, the slow reluctant closing of his eyes.

Etur(tle)nity

In the time it took me to go to the plant store,
buy a perennial,
talk to the plant man about how to tend to my ill roses,
come home,
peel and dice sweet potatoes,
make a tray of enchiladas
and put in a load of laundry,
the turtle had dug a small hole in our front yard with her back flippers,
without looking,
and laid her eggs.

I'd watched her
as the potatoes roasted.
She had come,
as she somehow knew to do,
across the road from the pond,
and slower than anything imaginable
had dug that hole,
had deposited eggs,
and then shoveled the spring most dirt back over her children
with her feet.

Her actions slowed down the world.
She was agonizingly thorough.
She would not leave without tamping down every particle
of that sandy dirt,
without replanting every blade of grass she'd pulled,
without making sure each blade of grass stood upright
so that there would be no sign
that she'd come.

I didn't expect to stand there the length of time it took to roast sweet potatoes.
I knew they were almost done,
and that the timer would ding.
I wanted her to rush.
I wanted a turtle to hurry.
It was maddening,
like watching my mother-in-law
in turtle form
prepare to leave the house.

It's fine, it's fine.
No one cares if you don't put back that last piece of grass.
You can do it later.
Just leave it. It's good. Let's just go.
I was waiting to escort her back across the road.
She continued to sweep the dirt
back in the hole,
her clawed flippers moving
hand over hand,
tamping and patting.
I could have grown sweet potatoes faster.

Finally, she'd replaced the soil
and began the more rapid journey
back to the pond.
I stood in the road like a school crossing guard
as she waddled toward the pond,
then slipped into the water
and dog paddled her way to the deep,
then dove.

Knitting

It's the quietest I am,
knitting.
I'm not counting.
I'm in a quiet world of memory,
imagining the rapid stitches of my grandmother,
how she could sew beads and sequins
into the rows of her work.
I'm thinking of my mother,
her needles tapping and clacking,
her pinky bent to hold the yarn,
knitting, watching TV, talking or reading,
not looking at her work.

I'm remembering the small cream jacket I'd made for my daughter
before she was born
and my grandmother's perfume passing through the room as I knit.

I'm remembering the box I'd opened at school
with the sweater my mother'd copied from a picture in a magazine
with a pink satin ribbon woven through.

I'm remembering sitting at the lake
at my grandmother's feet
with my arms outstretched,
a skein of yarn draped over each of my hands,
her rolling it into a ball.

Dull trips to Fall River to look at yarn.
Poring over knitting magazines
because my grandmother promised me a sweater of my choice.
The flowered afghan.
The Fair Isle pullover she said she'd never ever do again.
The Norwegian maroon sweater with white hearts I must have worn every day
for every winter
for all of high school.

I used to fall asleep at night
naming the gifts I've received
in my life
that were knitted for me,
that I've knitted for others.
I am soothed by knitting
and the thought of
so much yarn,
so much color and softness and texture,
quietly woven into love
as they did for me,
as I do now.

Shopping in Reality

The only way I'm not going to come home with black and gray clothes to add to those I already own is if  I successfully imagine I'm the next guest on What Not To Wear. If I am able to pretend that the two well-dressed, likable, fashion-smart people who help clueless shoppers go from a closet full of overalls and torn Led Zeppelin t-shirts to looking like they're ready for an evening in an art gallery are here with me in Macy's, then I will be a better, happy me.

I can pretend this. I am good at this imagining. I've been doing this sort of delusional thinking ever since 5th grade when I imagined a gymnastics scout was waiting until after class to sign me up for The Olympics after he'd seen me do a back bend in gym.

Really, I just need clothes for springtime, but each time I go to a store, I stall in front of the jeans, I pick up shapeless shirts, I run my hand along a rack of dresses, and then I leave the store with a new pair of socks and a dishtowel. Nothing saves me from myself. This is my pattern.  I need Stacy and Clinton.

Each episode starts with a friend or family member who has written to Stacy and Clinton to share the secret of the friend or family member who can't dress herself.  The victim dresses in clothes she's been wearing since middle school.  She leaves the house looking like she's forgotten to take off her pajamas or her Halloween costume, and she does this every day.  When she gets over the shame of having been lovingly yet underhandedly pointed out by her friend/family member, she often cries, telling how she hates to shop, how her life is sadder than you'd expect.  So Stacy and Clinton tell her she's worth it. They give her design tips. Look for color! No more black! Try a heel!  And they send her off by herself to Manhattan where she's left in a store with all these new tips, and where she inevitably succumbs to depression, falls into her well-worn habits, and leaves the store with new socks and a dishtowel.

No one has turned me in.  I really do just need clothes for springtime. So I head for Macy's. I have never, ever found a thing to buy at Macy's. I hate Macy's. But with Stacy and Clinton by my side (in my head), I will find a wardrobe. You two are so great. I appreciate your kind words. (And no,I tell them, I don't need the high heels they are sure I can walk in, the perfect jacket they assure me everyone needs in order to go from office to evening when all I need for that is a bathrobe, and I don't need a dress that comes across me on the diagonal to create the illusion of a full bust line.)  Thanks though. For now, you can help me find tops that don't make me look like I'm hiding the belly I'm trying to hide, pants that don't button just under the belly I'm trying to hide under my new top, and maybe a dress that doesn't make me look like a flight attendant or someone's old aunt.

I hear Stacy and Clinton whispering to each other as I stall in front of a sales rack where the sweaters that have languished on hangers for over 7 months have almost completed their sagging as their uneven sleeves brush the floor.Where the only jeans available are ones with sequins and supposedly stylish holes. "Oh no, what is she doing?" they whisper. "She's not picking up anything we told her to pick up!"  "Not those slacks! Put them back!"

And this is where my auditory hallucinations end.  Stacy doesn't appear by my side to then suggest the adorable tops I've missed, the pants I didn't even know I could consider, the shoes I could wear to work then to the symphony like that ever happens. No, it's still me.  Me and the shapeless top and the dark jeans, looking for more shapeless tops in spring-like beige.

The problem with delusions is, well for me at least, I can't delude myself into a different ending. I don't end up uncovering my hidden style, crying with pride and glowing from the transformation. I don't end up going to the end-of-the-show party where the shopper enters a room full of the people who turned her in in the first place and are now crying over her amazing appearance.  The truth is if I showed up in makeup, bright colors and tailored pants the next day at work, I would spend the whole day hoping no one noticed.

I sneak out of the store before Stacy and Clinton can stop me.

Neighborhood Docent

This is Sarah's house.
Her bedroom was on the top floor.
She had her own sink right in her room.

This is Nancy's house.
Her family had no furniture,
like they were in a play with no budget for scenery.
I turned on a light switch once
and turned it off again quickly.
Nancy got upset, turned it back on and looked at her watch and counted to some number.
It was a waste to have turned it on and off, she said, so she turned it back on and counted.
I never forgot.
I also never knew the magic number that would make the cost go away.

This is where Miriam lived.
Her sister was so old and shrugged at us as I brought my dolls
and my dollhouse up to Miriam's room to play.
Her mother drove sitting up with her arms bent,
her back not touching her car seat.

This is Carla's house.
We played dress-up on her front walk.
We had a bag of clothes with two hats and two purses.
The good hat and the good purse, the bad hat and the ugly purse.
When I would get to have the good purse, Carla would cry
and I would yell across the street for my mom to come get me.

This is Julie's house.
I went to a party there.
I didn't want to go.
My mother told me that only I could make it a good time or a bad time.
If I smiled, I'd have a good time, she told me.
I smiled.
Julie had a jukebox that worked.
It had records in it and we could push any button and listen to any song.
Smiling doesn't always work.

I'd never been in Mr. Chapman's house
and never wanted to
since his rooms were all piled high
with stacks of old newspapers that blocked the windows.

This is Gary's house.
He had a photographic memory.
He is my age and played the piano at Carnegie Hall when he was 11.
I played piano too with the same teacher.
I played in recitals with him.
The ones that were local.

This is Mrs. Thomas' house.
She had toy poodles.
She never let me touch them.

This is Mrs. Dyro's house.
She had a dog I could touch.
Barney.
But he had wiry hair
and I didn't want to.

This is Gisi's house.
I stayed there when my parents would go out of town.
I had my own room, my own section of the house.
I would leave the shower running and then sneak out the back door
to go meet a boy.

Not one of these people still live here.

Giving the Roses a Run For

On those days when there is no snow or rain, when the temperature is somewhere above shivering and just below overheating, when there's no other chore that appeals to me, I go into the garden with my holey gloves and my rusted clippers, and I take on the rugosa roses. The attention they require is what keeps me from having a flower bed like the ones in the gardening books. The ill-mannered, unshapely, thorny sticks, with runners that grab hold and tangle themselves just beneath the soil are what prevents me from planting the crepe-petaled poppies of June, the un-fussy coreopsis of July, the Russian sage that apparently anyone can grow without trouble, all because I am caught in a timeless battle with barbed, overgrown shrub things, planted before I lived here, that save themselves from slaughter with their yearly bloom. Like babies with colic, just when you think you can't take it anymore, they smile.

In April I am not swayed by the promise of their vibrant appearance. Instead, this is my time to catch them, when they are not yet awake.  I pull dead leaves away from where they've matted themselves in a circle around each plant. I yank at the stubborn orange bittersweet vines that add to the snarl by slithering up each thorny spike of rose and cement their roots to the ground below. I inspect each cluster of growth to see if it is worthy of calling itself a shrub. I push down the relics that try to get away with another year by staying upright even though they're dead. I push them until they snap.  

Then June comes and oh, the lovely roses. The pink. The abundance. The fragrance. I take pleasure in watching my neighbors stroll by them, commenting on their beauty.  I put plastic bags on metal dowels in their midst to catch and kill the beetles that force them to lose their petals too soon. I am like every Disney headmistress, stepmother and queen, showing off the beauty of the captive innocents to the unsuspecting public, then belittling and abusing them when we are alone.

In July, we are alone. I think against saving the rose hips for jelly and behead them before their time. I decide there is no need for the roses, now in their setting days, to stretch the length of the perennial bed. So I am back with my clippers. I yank them out by their runners.  I fill and refill the wheelbarrow with their remains.  I visit the greenhouses and buy myself a container of something else. Something I will have forgotten I've planted by the time next April comes, when I am back outside, my dog nearby, leash staked into the ground, running after squirrels within the limits of her restraint.

Spring

It's the sounds I've missed,
The trill of frogs from the pond,
The wild conference of birds mismatched, singing over one another
all at once,
The sound wind makes when it has leaves to blow,
the snow transformed into drops, warm enough to be rain again.

And the smells.
Winter has none.
Spring smells.
The salt of the ocean,
the stink of the hidden earth,
under leaves left.
It smells like spring, she'd say,
when I thought she was too small to know
seasons had smell.

And the slop of my steps
on the now bare wet ground,
and the tools uncovered from last fall
waiting in my garden,
and the empty pots
tipped over drunk in the yard,
waiting for new plants to tend.

And the colors,
the vivid greenness
sharp enough
to pierce through the brown leaves left to protect them.
Here I am!
And the peek-a-boo yellow of a bud,
And the warmth of blue,
and the calm of the day ending,
and the pile of snow
each day smaller,
defeated.

What was the cold?
What was it to be inside
with chapped fingers
and dusty houseplants
and narrow pathways shoveled
to the woodpile?
With only a window to watch
the birds sort through the box
of seeds I'd left them.

Frogs
have come from the murky depth,
ospreys circle overhead
and dive into the brilliant water.
There was never winter.
Just a distraction.
For this.

Lulu

Last night my grandmother appeared.
I talk to her rarely.
I talk at her.
Usually I've just shown her my tricks,
my knitting,
my singing,
my children.

But last night she sat facing me on the sofa,
her hair a beautiful gray,
glasses with wide black frames that suited her.
She looked right at me. Right at me.
I asked her, "Do you miss the lake?"
Yes, she said. That's what she misses the most.
"Me, too," I said, "I miss that the most." And I cried.
I didn't miss her lake,
but I know now what it meant for her
to be in Maine
away, on her own,

I missed my lake.
I told her I look forward to it and didn't say extremely,
but I felt it.
Like a dancer would show with her arms
and her face.
Urgently.
Intensely.
Longingly.

I was about to say how her lake was so different,
that she was more social than I,
that she seemed to need

people around her,
that she'd call and ask when we were coming.
But the opportunity escaped,
and suddenly my husband's nephew
made his way onto the sofa
in the middle
and smiled
waiting for me to take his picture.
Then my mother was there and my aunt,
all on the sofa.
And I couldn't find her.

Away

The copper and black ribbons

and wisps of hair, unruly

and mingled,

the girls’ fingers intertwined,

nails of shared color,

pink

and chipped,

the sweet softness of their hands

even I

feel

by just looking.

I held. I stroked.

In quiet moments sitting as they now do

sharing whispered moments of memory

and notes of song

near dappled, lapping silver blue glitter of the lake.

Days from then

leave.

Those I held, felt, helped

leave

away

from me.

shoveling snow

As the snow slowed
and the sky moved toward night,

I’d go out with my brother

to help him shovel the pathway from our house,

to help him clear the driveway and the sidewalk.

He used a snow shovel,

I used the brass shovel from the fireplace set,

the one meant for ashes,

Not for snow.

He’d clear a path wide

like my father asked,

not just the width of a shovel

like he wanted to make,

And I would try to help

with the brass shovel

that swiveled,

dropping each scoopful of snow

out of the shovel

back onto the sidewalk.

I’d quit

before crying,

and I’d smooth the snow with my wet mittens

and make a sofa

out of the snowbank

where I could sit

and watch him.

The snow would glitter in the the streetlight,

and we would yell

and wave our arms at the oncoming plow

as it shoved the snow

back into our driveway.

Bowling for gym

Strangely, I work there now,

In the same building

where we had bowling

for gym

downstairs.

Now I park my car

in the lot where the van had left us,

walk past the door that led to the lanes

I don’t clearly remember,

and I go upstairs to an office

in the building

where I was in 4th grade.

Sometimes the door leading down

is open,

and the steps to where I think I bowled

are dangerous

and the walls crumbly

and water dripping,

and a workman’s lamp

hooked onto a wire

lights a damp way down.

What could I remember

about bowling underground

when I was 9?

I, who had a tortoise named Tootie

that only I remember,

I, with a distinct, unshared memory

of the neighbor

chasing me down my street with a rifle

after I’d crept onto his lawn

with other kids,

I, with a great grandmother I remember sleeping

in the top bunk

at a nursing home

as if 90 year old women in nursing homes

had bunk beds?

Who could I ask if we’d truly bowled

in a basement alley
where I was a little girl

and now am 51?