Philoxenia
Darling strangers populate my life, ones I love dearly,
more than life herself—a prophet and a blind woman,
a small terrier mix, possibly Jack Russell, part Maltese
or bichon frisé—a rescued mutt with plane propellors
for ears always on alert, never taking for granted
my obsession with arranging words on a page,
basking in the luminous windows of mystery ciphers
day in and day out, as if a divine messenger dictated
these nocturnal syllables in wingless squares of light.
If I ever have a daughter, I would name her Philoxenia,
her four-roomed heart enlarged for sages and strangers.
The word is a feminine noun not only for entertaining
angels but extending love to people unknown to us.
Lines from the Afterlife
Earthside, I loved to swim the backstroke,
to dive like a frog—not a swan or cannonball.
Chose three jade-colored matcha sets—bamboo whisk,
everything into my basket.
Played pencil break with boys after recess
when they were hot-faced, antsy.
Sported a magenta faux fur hat in the winter—
just felt like it, no questions asked. Strangers thought
I had crazy hair—in other words, the magenta follicles
were my very own.
Got rid of all my summer clothes; weary of laundering,
so I gave them away.
Learned to row a kayak across a lake—a paddle board
or a catamaran might count one day, too.
Then I realize—there is no one day;
this is the afterlife. Yes, when we existed in time,
we walked on this planet in suits made of flesh rags,
a polydactyl terrier mix in our hairless arms.
The Change
I can live with the power surges,
an internal furnace, a private summer.
It’s a relief, to tell the truth—
my ship’s kitchen comes to rest
inside the moorings of my body
tethered by sinew and tendon,
resilient from the tidal flow
of three and a half decades. Now,
this hour has shepherded
a faithful mare, this body, far past
half a century: pear-shaped organ,
childless, non-fruiting cultivar
of a petite olive tree in my yard.
Yes, I prayed to hasten your ebb—
please forgive me.
Curiosities
1.
Why do trees cling to their leaves
in winter even after the first snow
has fallen? The name is marcescence,
as if a word alone yields understanding.
2.
A fogbank rolling into the bay, the marine layer of mists over the sea, and low clouds wafting over the bluffs— I looked at a page and saw the words, fig bank, an imaginary vault of those violet-skinned, fleshy delectables piled high as my shoulders. Why not a fig bank, I wonder.
3.
The rage of little dogs around the neighborhood when the mail carrier walks from stoop to stoop, dropping off envelopes without enmity, without hate or vengeance; is this how God looks upon our petulant miseries, our petty, misinformed grievances?
4.
The beloved, water-based pen streaks recklessly. Instead of washing your hands, you press your inked palms upon blank pages, there, there, and there. So, why does one do what one does, anyway? Is this the apostle’s question? I am paraphrasing—I do not do what I should do, yet I also do not do what I ought to do. So there, so there.
5.
Is this a soul in periphrasis?
6.
We turn the page—another day or month, a changing of the year. Hasn’t it all come to a head—the world is reeling twice over in a cartwheeling darkness while shouting into an abyss. The image of a floating dumpster on fire makes us laugh.
7.
If we must live with ourselves, at least we do so under the mercy.
A Daughter’s Requiem
On a Sabbath afternoon, the blind woman walks all the way to the marshland, taking a basket of her six sorrows. Sparrows? No, sorrows, one for each decade of her life: her father gone, her marriage, the onset of a hereditary condition attacking her retinal pigments, then secondary glaucoma, cataracts, an enzyme deficiency meaning no fava beans or cashews, and now her daughter is dead.
It’s gone far beyond the little cups of grief sitting on a sill. Now grief requires a basket, and she carries it wherever she goes. Her dead daughter isn’t here, but in a dream, she holds an unwavering belief that her daughter is in the bog; the fenlands, the slough, the quagmire. No lights, no swamp fires; there’s no prophet to show the way; the blind woman goes alone.
Now a red-tailed hawk
considers her dark basket
of muddy wares, then flies on.
Next, the jeering, merciless wildflowers goad the blind woman to set down her basket and gaze upon birds she hears but cannot see—a flock of monk parakeets nesting by the electric substation, the wading herons and the owls, the egrets and warblers. I cannot see the birds, although I can hear their songs. The blind woman knows leaving her basket means she’ll never find it again in the rushes.
Who are we without our sorrows?
Or who are we without the things
that made us more human?
In protest, I double my fists and cry out to the wildflowers who are impossibly cruel to my grandmother. The heartless star asters, trout lily, mallow, goldenrod, and trillium with their noxious vanity are culpable for mocking her—stop it, I shout. I object to their lack of compassion. Can’t you see, I scold the forget-me-nots, narcissus, and dog-tooth violets; she’s blind.
My beloved grandmother wears your preening fragility pressed to her throat; although her retinas disintegrated years ago, she wears all-seeing eyes of the dead. She has loved you despite your pitiless castigations, your unmerited beauty in the wilderness, don’t you see—
How she carries the barge
of her dead daughter’s heart
sinking in a red burial dress?
Bonnet Syndrome
After the torn retina, the passing of her daughter as well as her mother, and the sale of a house after a girl broke down in tears—upset when the lockbox key wouldn’t open, or angry because she didn’t like the fig tree? Regardless, the blessing passed on to a pair of architects.
The blind woman says, after surgery,
I see patterns floating in my vision—
technicolor plaid or gingham.
The patterns arise in shimmering squares and perpendicular lines, named for the naturalist whose last name rhymes with away and not with bonnet, three centuries ago, who heard it described by his grandfather —sound of mind, other than seeing hallucinations.
No, not argyle, paisley, dots,
herringbone, or twill. An optic nerve’s
dearth is imagination’s gift.
All those years of sleeping on a couch upholstered with antique fabric her mother bought—she sees the colors of her youth, the plaid skirts for primary school, the gingham dresses—her sight is the imagination seeing what is not there. Of all the patterns she knows by name—the houndstooth, corduroy, gold jacquard, or calico—it’s plaid and gingham who serve as faithful companions in this station of her life.
Death, you say?
No, my dear—
dearth, not yet death.
Anniversary
On the one-year anniversary of her daughter’s death, I go outside in the night. I see the fuchsia rays directly overhead, due north, and a blush in the night sky the color of fuchsia on a faraway isle where a saint lived in exile after fighting over a hand-copied psalter; words worth fighting over. The green marble pebbles on the shore are named for the saint’s tears.
It’s the first aurora borealis I’ve ever seen. Instead of the usual magnetic dance of emerald and luminous lime, the northern lights are very still, almost frozen as if staged, a motionless tableau for the world to take notice. I said to the blind woman, it’s like looking overhead for a sunset, although you know it’s not daylight; near midnight, it’s not crepuscular.
When it’s fuchsia, the solar flare is moving along magnetic field lines a hundred fifty miles in space—not the lower lights showing up chartreuse, lime, emerald.
She loves us, still, is all she said,
eyes closed, brimming with grief.
God is telling us, she loves us.
Months ago, she heard a nurse say to the doctor—
her eyes are beet red
from crying nonstop. She just
lost her daughter.