Magnolia

It's a Question of Stewardship

YOU ARE a cameo in night
Rising a fright a child had in the woodshed,            
a byte from midnight
one of Peter Schuann's Bread & Puppet figures. Those wide cheekbones
slim bone cameo                        putting in an appearance, a tracing, next-of kin:
Far from minimal. Minimal is a mirror catching the figure in steam then becoming riddled with holes
Like lace.         You are the real deal: the whole thing that shafts the heart
Alight a paper lantern.
I am a mother waiting for an adolescent to come home from movies
a mother sitting up at night
By a boy with a toothache
Girl with ear ache        slice of torn sheet wound round her ear & jaw:
To think this longing bloomed West 75 in neon flickers          we lived at right angles rarely saw each other in the college café:
I watched your light go on & off, it appeared a single bulb in dawn, in first daylight I become a doctor
Holding the featherweight
Of a diagnostic report
Metal clip chart
Heavier & heavier in my hands
Becoming a coal bucket
Suddenly ten stone. Salt fields, designer salt flats glisten
Unlike French salt, a grayish gleam. Portuguese is pure white shining
In France rain whips up charcoal from mud of saltpans, leaves gray residue
You are a weight         an attending, a wait slight cameo. When you slam in, doves, docile as docents will alight.

On the Other Side

They are cutting glass
Shearing & nailing                  life that was:
No traffic regulations  on the other side:
Absent a saint who can inspire or imbue guilt
In the poorest of clothes:
You go            ear to the blue hum of a radio:
A gray taffeta quilt
Stairways narrow as needles  
                                    Coals glowing in an iron
Crisis roots run deep: you see at the bus stop I am doing  much, battling
Fatigue, hand of old age in my hand:
            there is no harbour anywhere Hay is burning in winter sun
tinderbox rooms on the wrong side of the tracks: poverty & gin:
Extremes of bright geraniums
When I go skyrocketing out of the body
To the other side                      will I see  oil paints drying glossy as rosin
Traveling overland like this, box cars bumping alongside Salt fields
“Tattered Cover” bookstore pans out of the scene
I was caught in the generation of girls who wore  sashes
Those volatile dreams have come to dust & ashes.
Verdict written in longhand:  accept bitter frosts, copious grieving:
On the other side the mirror catches wind coming in from ocean, black dog, red pig

Most Mortal

I caught you with your feet up
I am filled with foreboding      a storm sky over the prairies
& crackling ice
Winter wheat. Little is going our way, a hockey stick
Glowing spectral gray
No schoolmaster’s child
This is the year the money died, carried in burnished coffins, buried.  Sleek wet rain turns leaves over. Rise & shine            I am the door
A week to have the blues        musically:
Green eyes                  iron      gone all the way
Book stores are shuttering      moths are blowing:
Some one is writing it all up
I will cross over
Narrow as needles
Coals glowing in a steam, iron
I study the Old Age Pension
Allowance possible for her who is mine:
common law partner
getting it all almost down
Then feeling it slip
Like the crown
From the boy who played child of the May
Then was called away.

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