tracks
There are tracks
on this page, leading
back to a time
when trains clattered past
with the sound of typewriter keys
on one of those old machines--
and Underwood perhaps,
and words were as hard as spikes
not shadows on a screen
that might signify a plane
high up in the night,
dragging its tracks behind
in momentary ice.
spring
Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
We meet at funerals every few years--another star
in the constellation of our family put out--and even in that failing light, we look completely different, completely the same.
"What are you doing now?"
we ask each other, "How
have you been?" At these times the past is more palpable than our children waiting at home or the wives and husbands tugging at our sleeves.
"Remember . . . ?" we ask, "Remember the time . . . ?"
And laughter is as painful as if our ribs had secret cracks in them.
Our childhoods remain only in the sharp bones of our noses, the shape of our eyes, the
cousins
way our genes call out to each other in the high-pitched notes that only kin can hear. How much of memory is imagination? And if loss is an absence, why does it grow so heavy? These are the questions we mean when we ask "Where are you living now? or "How old is your youngest?"
Sometimes I feel the grief of these occasions swell in me until I become an instrument in which language rises like music. But all that the others can hear is my strangled voice calling "Goodbye . . . " calling "Keep in touch . . . " with the kind of sound a bagpipe makes, its bellows heaving, and even its marching music funereal.