Poetry

With Holding

I dreamt I rifled through your wallet.

By morning I knew it was your heart.

Looking for the writing

I call pieces of my soul,

you caught me

so I stopped before finding none.

I dreamt you slept in your black wool suit,

pleated here and there into tiny accordions,

set in

like your mood,

like the decision you made

to retreat from my family.

I dreamt my father asked to shake your hand when he stopped by from the dead.

(Please) I begged, so you did.

I dreamt we walked beneath a vaulted sky.

We came for art

but the walls were bare.

You took

my hand

but you never held it.

Still life

I wade in the evening exhalation.

By morning find her tender

in flannel and pads.

A coverlet of tightly woven silk,

shed to the ground.

My mother’s milky-watercolor eyes

weep memory and ash.

The wind of an approaching storm

blows through her lips

like the first breath.

Shadows sweep.

Clouds caress the sun.

An echo of existence

tethered

to morning light.

So I tend, winter birds-

adding tea water to their bath and over the snowy rail.

Cats, slightly distanced by the drip of the kettle in my hand,

define these days and nights.

Nights,

to consider questions,

when my mother denies herself another walk

upon this earth.

I dream my grandmother’s mouth across each closed eye,

feel her reacquaint me

before a procession of sinks.

The quiet sway to see through walls,

defy unbreakable plates.

Stand in one kitchen.

Yearn for another

where enchantment builds, sifts,

from the carriage of her splendid hands, the threaded journey of songbirds,

cast over storied lace.

Hear the words of her ancient language

root and resist, rustle, like brilliant weeds, willing to speak

aching to receive.

Light tips the morning table.

Cats pace as prophets do.

Coughing resumes.

A strand of fire

draws out the low cry of a name

a daughter will never hear the same way,

once a mother has gone.