March 31, 2012What Remains
—for Russ
I find oranges just beyond
my dining room window,
fallen from the tree, some halfeaten
by squirrels in the shape
of my mother’s memory.
Sometimes I pick up the whole ones,
take my arm, as I did when
I was a girl on first base,
wind up, and throw the orange
through bushes and shrubs until it
plops into the pond. The sound
reminds me that there is
an ocean somewhere beyond
the pests in my yard. Sometimes,
only part of the skin
remains, the rest gone,
disappeared, like my mother’s
voice hanging on the clothes line.
Sometimes I’m sure I’m almost
there, but she made her escape
like an angel or an orchid
on my back porch, having
remained in bloom longer
than anyone in our house expected.
Some people say Florida
looks like a flower. I say, come, trace
my foot—I’ll show you
how to live
after your mother leaves you,
as if we, the living, were something
more solid than antique china
on a shelf in a woman’s
pantry. The story is never
over. I, too, have hungered
for my mother to criticize
the way my hair hangs in my face.
I’ve wanted her voice to call me
in for a home-cooked meal.
Yours was a grandmother
to two boys, now laid out in her
best dress—a wife your father lost
on his way to happiness.
from #25 - Summer 2006