David Graham

Father

Business or pleasure:  what brings me here?

For some reason I want to tell the desk clerk

my father is dying.  Don't know why I don't.

Definitely business, though:  bottom of the bottom line.

There is no God but God is our father.

I have no father but here he lies, ashen in final fever.

An old friend rests a hand on my shoulder.

Thank you, I say, but for what, exactly?

Another friend writes well, this is

the big one, isn't it?  I feel oddly honored.

Cold coffee and an orange hard as stone

in his room.  Disconnected phone.  Closet full

of his shirts.  We count his breaths, discuss

any changes.  Weather report for a single room.

Nurses on break outside at a picnic table, smoking

and joking.  Breath and smoke mingled, yes.

My mother kisses him, urges him to let go.

But he left us years ago.  We're the ones holding on.

Outside a room down the hall someone has hung

wind chimes.  As if to demonstrate the lack of wind.

======================================

Low Water

I like low water because

then we can walk the shore

a long way, my dog and I,

without having to bushwhack

up the steep hill above our lake.

It's undeveloped state land,

those woods and shoreline,

which is to say it's mine,

a gift from my mother

as I like to think.  She and I

used to paddle our boats

from our beach down the lake

to a particular pine right above

the water, with thick roots

embracing a large mossy boulder. 

It must have been growing

a hundred years or more.

She's loved that tree and rock

since clambering down

this shore as a girl, and right

there, in the pathless woods

above that tree, she declared

her ashes should be scattered

when she died.  She made

me promise.  Every year

as we would paddle past

she checked to be sure

I remembered exactly

which spot.  So at low water

I still hike there, picking

my way over driftwood

and slick Adirondack stones,

watching for whatever

surprise presents itself--

mink or kingfisher, and once

a great blue heron right on

her rock, unfolding

its historical wings to rise

right over me and out

over the water.  When my

father died my mother

changed her mind--told me

to put her ashes with his

when the time came.  He had

no love for this lake and woods,

just for her, and so we left

his ashes in a churchyard

far from here, as he would

have wished, though

at my mother's last-minute

urging, I stole a cupful

to bury here in the garden

by her beloved lake.  That

was years ago now, before

her legs went, and then her

mind, though she still breathes

and eats, fearful and full

of complaint.  She no longer

talks about her ashes, but

sometimes I still see this lake

pass across her face like

a cloud over Piseco Mountain.

I intend to keep my vow,

though not entirely sure

what it should be.  On my

last visit she looked at me

pleadingly as I said goodbye

and spoke her clearest

sentence in days:  "David,

get me out of here!"  When

water gets low enough, I will.

==========================

My Mother Goes Back to Christmas 1937

The doctor settles opposite her in a straight chair

looking kindly and earnest, and I can tell

what's coming.  He asks her her name

and of course she snorts, "you know that!"

Yes, he does.  But then he inquires if she can say

what season.  She looks around the ward

craftily:  decorated tree, tinsel, cartoon snowflakes

stuck to the windows.  "It's almost Christmas.

What are you getting me?"  Next he wonders

if she knows the year.   She glares into his face,

allows a sullen pause. . . . Then, "1937" she says.

And so it is.  She's going on sixteen, a girl

ready to burn and roam, nobody's fool,

a spitfire, all vinegar and fizz.  The War

is but a vague mist on the horizon.   This year

has a gleaming, sun-scoured sound.  1937.

The train is about to leave the station

for the one and only time.  She'll be damned

if she won't be on it, and ride far from home.

==========================

Oblique Elegy on a Bright Winter Day

            They are all gone into the world of light!

                        --Henry Vaughan

We are all gone into the world of light--

daylight, sure, but more, today all ashine

with sun-struck ice coating walkways

and car roofs, glinting off windows,

coating garbage can and back stoop alike,

dazzling the eye no more than the heart

to see, to feel, and know the old ache

of an ever-melting brightness we can never

touch, like music, or breath, or the look

in the eye of a child no more a child

forevermore.  We are all gone before

we rightly arrive, and that is the sweetness

and that is the cold of light as it leaves.

============================

Somewhere Above

My grandmother died so long ago, decades, another

entire life, I find my memories fraying, turning yellow

as window shades, muffled and heavy somewhere

in a side room of my brain, like the bleached parlor

full of her antiques and oppressive leather bound books

--or fake leather, at least, but heavy with murk, with history--

and she is somewhere above in the huge quiet house,

napping after lunch, and so I roam room to room

bored out of my unbudded skull, counting dust motes

drifting across the windows, making up a tune

to go with the sound of the echoey grandfather clock,

driven finally to reach high as I can on that book shelf

in back of the piano, pulling out a single book

--some long forgotten best seller, maybe, or a history

of our dull county, or more likely a treatise on Christian values

written by someone dragging around a string of letters

after his now completely disintegrated name.

Thus I sit in the uncomfortable wing chair reading,

reading because otherwise I myself will turn to dust

as that day mostly has, because though I know

approximately nothing about anything at all,

I know with utter certainty I don't want that. . . .

And all the while Grandmother naps, or reads her own book,

or just stretches out her legs in bed, sighs, and savors

the quiet.  I know she is up there somewhere, and

will descend well before dinner time to ask what

I have been doing, and if I'd like to play some checkers

or have a snack before we go to the market.  I have

no doubt she is up there, dozing, pacing, flipping through

her magazine maybe, but though I am utterly certain,

I am utterly wrong.  She's nearly gone already,

her voice fading first, tattered and frayed to almost nothing,

then her pale soft skin, her sharp eyes and improbably long

gray hair the color of dusk and dust forevermore.

======================================

While Barred Clouds Bloom The Soft-Dying Day...

It's good to live near a small-town cemetery,

all those unwritten novels beneath placid sod.

Furious and frantic equally silenced, along with

the calm and clear, those rural saints

who carried their loads until they couldn't,

then lay down without complaint like a pile

of autumn leaves.  All side by side the former

majorettes, preachers with low burning voices,

fathers grown hoarse from shouting, sisters

dancing with sisters under yellow street lights

aimed at dawn.  All this and more, but mostly

the unsaid that cracks stone after stone

every winter, and comes out, if at all,

as gibberish and trash talk from the crows

who perch in the oldest oaks above it all.

© David Graham

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