Truck

5 Poems by Julia Wendell

Boxwood

was her signature musk-mint

I hid behind, counting mallards: 35, 36, 37—

my mother calling to me across Applebrook’s pond,

counting her ducklings—three of us,

bustled into the station wagon,

bound for our northern home

where the green, waxy bush couldn't grow.

I spy something with my own little eye—

my father leaned into my small shoulder—

something that begins with B—

and I believed him.

Who planted it at grandmother’s graveside,

as if she could be reduced to a single something—

photograph, recipe, poem—or a bush

to signify and flourish

just above the surface of memory.

Appearances

I am always sitting at my mother’s

immaculate table

when I think of him,

the iris or Arthurian or calla bouquet

poised voluminously on its

center of the table throne,

obscuring the face

on the other side.

Growing up, I could feel

my older, silent brother there,

his darkness

still such a long way down,

where darkness begins.

Tonight, Jack sits bearded and flip-flopped,

with an English driving cap covering

his greasy, shoulder-length black hair.

We have just driven

from Iowa to western Pennsylvania

in my MG Midget—top down and singing along

to the Talking Heads for a thousand miles,

which did nothing for our do’s—

I’ve pulled mine back, he wears his hat.

I can’t discern his furrowed brow

through the crowd

of chrysanthemums and candelabras

the size of small pillars,

as my father--too soon after

the Russian River toast--warns him

to register for the draft,

his duty as a citizen.

I hear the ensuing argument,

the thump and slide

of chairs pulled back,

as my father and lover retreat

from our holiday table.

I think Viet Nam

provoked their angers,

which flare and then subside

when my mother calls them back

from their scuffle in the hallway

for Kahlua mousse.

Now the bouquet of memory

has thinned, silver polished

and put away for good,

I see it was the stupid hat.

How could anyone—

particularly the one who’d won

the attentions of his only daughter—

wear his hat to dinner?

What kind of background must he have?—

I hear my mother ask,

a word she often used,

as if we were gelatin defined

by the mold we were poured into.

It never mattered

if we couldn’t see each other,

but we had to come from class.

We began every meal

at Mother’s bidding:

bowing our heads

to recite the Lord’s Prayer,

though it had little to do

with who we were

or where we wanted to trespass--

a formula for good behavior

we abided by

at Mother’s imperious supper.

Regret

If she dies on Monday,

 we’ll bury her on Friday, my father predicted,

a different day each day she didn’t go.

The choir of nurses increased the morphine.

But if she dies on Wednesday, the 4^th

will get in our way, my father corrected,

as if distressed by the hypothetical postponement.

That year, the town planned to blow up

one of its obsolete bridges

as part of the fireworks display.

She had been dying for so long,

we almost wanted

to get it over with.

Plus, I have to get back to the farm,

I whispered in my mother’s blind ear.

Surely, she would last another week.

She’s taken a turn for the worse,

my father advised, as I pulled into a gas station

in Shrewsbury, thirty miles from my life,

as if there could be any worse turn

than what she had already navigated.

I ran through my doorway to grab the ringing

phone, my father’s hoarse voice cracking,

Your mother died just a minute ago.

Just a minute ago.

Sit still, she’d admonish me

in church, as I fidgeted

in bobby socks and cotton pinafore,

on the red velvet cushion,

my knobby knees tucked up

under my skirt,

as I fiddled away the excruciating  hour

of droning hymns and hope.

You’ll regret it some day,

her pointer to lips would say.

Until We Meet Again

My job each Christmas Eve:

placing fifty crooked candles on their stems,

dripping thimblefuls of wax, then holding

each in place, until it sticks,

standing straight on its own.

If I begin mid-afternoon,

as flakes start to sprinkle

from their shaker of Pennsylvania sky,

I’ll be ready for the ghosts’ arrival:

The women wearing Christmas red,

the men in tuxes with crimson

bow tie exclamations,

all at least a decade dead,

and excited for another

of Marian’s parties to begin.

Uncle Bud places the diamond stylus

on the opening bars of La Traviata.

He sings along,

but will soon succumb to heart failure,

warbling long-distance to his British mistress.

Nanny holds court on the settee,

the key to the liquor closet

tucked safely in her velvet pocket.

She never learned to trust us.

Gammy’s knitting by the fire. She boasts

the world’s most delicious water—

the gurgling cooler in her basement farm kitchen.

The tiny, triangular paper cups

never held enough.

Father Baker swirling cognac by the fire.

I remember him routinely

miscalculating the amount of sacramental wine,

so he’d have to tip his head back

and drain the holy chalice.

His hands shook as he placed the wafer

on my tongue.

I use foot-long fireplace matches,

pressured to complete the lighting

in time for everyone to be seated,

ceiling lights snuffed,

Mother at table’s head,

feeling more beautiful in vaguer light,

as Clarence serves Clams Casino 

on pewter plates the span of bushel baskets.

Marian in her last year,

slumped in a Bishop’s chair,

advising me not to bother with the candles—

they could not be lit in time.

How could it matter what she looks like now?

She grimaces at the camera,

posing one last time for future guests—

smiling now too much for her,

and her love of flickering

extinguished—but not mine.

I climb my farmhouse steps,

so many Christmases after my mother’s,

met by the only lights

blooming through dark windows,

the telltale candelabra.

Walking the Dogs

When I could no longer see

out of my right eye,

I kept it closed, resigned

to the vision I had left.

The circumference of my world

was cut in half

and I had to turn my head

90 degrees, to see Hawaii and Japan

or the verso of any page.

The specialist reassured me

that the bloody Rorschach stain

would resolve over time.

But I knew better.

I struggled with stronger glasses,

an eye patch, a focused reading lamp,

all in an effort

to see the way I used to

before succumbing to the good enough.

Catching the last hour

of sunlight with the dogs, who cares

if it gets too dark to see

as we Braille our way

past the property line

to the Halle’s beckoning pond.

Even ancient Daisy Crossy-Paws

whose hocks barely bend

limps happily

through the vagaries of dusk.

A crimson strip of sky

guides our way

to the chatter of corn stalks

on one side and the hush

of pond water on the other.

The dogs pad out

onto the broken dock

and through the sentries of willow reeds.

I hear them easing in,

hear their accumulative stroking,

patches of inky pond scum parting,

and the last smidge of light clicking off

as they disappear through the lens of water

and head for Micronesia.

Julia Wendell’s most recent book of poems is The Sorry Flowers (Word Tech Press, 2009), plus a memoir that same year from galileo press--Finding My Distance: A Year in the Life of a Three-day Event Rider. She is currently looking for a publisher for her new food-poem manuscript, Take This Spoon, which addresses all kinds of addictions, particularly to food and cooking and family. She still rides and competes her horses when she’s not writing poems. She lives with the incomparable poet, Barrett Warner, on 83 acres in northern B-More County.