bruorton

That tree was part of me, or I was part of it.

I'm not quite sure. Four feet thick at the base,

with grooves in its bark I could wedge my hand into,

it was a mainstay of my early years. Its climbs,

its views, as intimately known as family. The games

I played, dancing in and out of its dappling shade

with a certainty that never countenanced

the storm-wracked day it fell upon our home,

shattering the ridgepole, chimney, windows.

Were it not for the house's rugged post-and-beam

construction I'd have been part of it for good;

the main trunk crashing to rest mere feet above my head.

After the rain, we opened the door to find its canopy

snapped off into the yard at the far end from the jagged

stump: the lawn, become an upside-down jungle.

The next day, gazing up into the blue cavity

where it had stood, I saw a bird circling, bewildered.

It is that bird I think of now, when she says

she's not feeling much of anything exactly,

the week after her husband of six years moved out.

She's sitting on a stool at her kitchen bar,

turning her water glass in circles, counter-clockwise,

and achingly it comes to me that nothing I can give

could fill the breach she's standing under.

But once upon a time,
some anonymous worker

knocked an oak peg
through a hemlock tenon,
anchoring it in its mortise socket.
A momentary, forgettable gesture,
that allowed me to walk out

into the sudden jungle of the world.

Saturday mornings with K

are blueberry pancakes,

always. Or waffles, on

occasion. But either way,

a sacred time together.

This morning, as usual,

I end up with a spoonful

too many blueberries,

and since by this time

they are already thawed

I simply eat them,

the crisp strange tang

of their juice taking me

not to just any of the

times I have eaten

wild blueberries

in my life, but to the one

tiny patch that grew

near the marsh above

my family's house,

now swallowed up by

the encroachment of trees

and time, where I

and my brothers spent

so many afternoons

foraging together.

There is something in the way

her head descends out of the darkness
to rest on my shoulder

after an evening full of the wrong words
and misunderstood silences

that feels like a restoration of the world,

like the rain falling steadily outside

that is bringing the dark and secret places

of the forest back to life.

for

kaph

What color was it, that scarf you made for me
when we were courting? Green, I know,
but which shade, exactly? I can remember
unwrapping it well enough, and my cat
happily chewing on the hemp twine it came
bound in. And all our love letters, our long
phone calls, our five-month engagement.
What did we think we were doing? We were
scared at moments, I know, but also
in love, and we couldn’t wait, and were pretty sure
we knew a good thing when we’d found it.

But that scarf, I thoughtlessly left behind
(my best guess) on a mid-town MTA bus somewhere
in those first couple years—abandoned
not unlike the restless tenor of my letters:
where did that eager passion go?
Into the long, exhausting hours I worked those years,
real jobs like I’d never had to do before, sometimes
two at a time? Or was it just I felt nothing
more to aspire to? I sometimes look back and think:
you were sold a bill of goods, my dear.

What I do remember these days
is to take special care with this new scarf
you've knitted me, wider than the first.
It’s the least I can do, in a marriage that seems
a continuous exchange of unrepayable kindnesses,
and when I still can't recall what shade that first scarf was,
only this one: pale grey-green, like winter sun
shining through a cresting wave.

for kaph

I always check the pockets of our shirts and pants
before I give them over to the washer
(since between us we’ve decorated I don’t know
how many laundries with our forgotten
kleenex) and more often than not these days
I find in yours the odd half-dozen
sunflower seeds, the loose change of your
forest rambles, where you always take enough
to pause from time to time, hand held out,
for any congregated chickadees to come
alight upon your hand and pluck a daring
snack from off your palm. The cagey ones
just hover and zip off, but others perch
and look around, showing off their boldness.

I always make sure I get them all—not
wanting to waste good seed—before I finish
with the weekly chore. Then, gathering
my take, I scatter them outdoors for whatever
may find and need them. And now I come
to write this down, I wonder if the next time
you are in the woods and fishing for a last
seed somewhere for a persistent hungry
chickadee, if you will think of me, doing laundry,
in much the same way as I think of you
while doing it. Keep looking, I assure you,
there’s almost always still a few more left
for a tiny heart aloft on dainty wings.

For a reason she could never afterward explain,
she turned around while crossing the living room
and there he was, sitting in his favorite chair,
though of course he had died three weeks before.

He grinned at her, not a morbid grin, but his old,
lop-sided, jokey grin.
                               "Hi," he said. She just stared,
part dumbstruck, partly just trying to work out if etiquette
changed for conversations with your dead husband.

In the end, old patterns re-asserted themselves.
Her bluntness won out.
                               "Why are you here?" she
asked.
             He shrugged. "I was concerned about you.
I hope you don't feel guilty," he said.
             "Of course I do,"

she said, "all those years, and I still ask myself whether
I really loved you, or just did everything I ought to have if I did.
Whether it was all an act to convince you---to convince
myself, really."
             He was shaking his head. "It's not like that,"

he said. He looked at her, lovingly. She had forgotten,
by now, that he wasn't real.
                   "You were the best wife
I could have hoped for," he said.
                  She bit her lip. "Thank you,"
she said. She was blinking back tears, and between one blink

and another, he was gone.
                                         "Thank you, thank you,"
she kept saying, though, several times even after
she knew he was gone.
                                She didn't say, "I love you,"
but it was what she meant.

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Entries tagged with marriage

Post and Beam

Wild Blueberries

Forgiveness

Scarf

Doing Laundry

What She Meant to Tell His Ghost

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