EAST
“In our family we stammer unless,
half mad,
we come to speech at last”
30. April
Slowly they unfurl from the leafbed; fiddlehead ferns, spring pinks, violets. Green at the tips of wet black branches. Tree trunks wet and black as seals.
Spring in the east.
Woodpeckers knock at the treetops.
In the creekmud, bullfrogs roar.
Mom is quiet now. Her eyes are soft. Gray spring light touches her hair, her brow: her thoughtful, tense, intelligent, long-furrowed brow, its lines laid open, unspoiled, like a field of new-fallen snow.
She looks at Emmeline, asleep in her baby sling. Scrunched in her baby softness, dark hair silken, sweet lips relaxed, body molded to my body.
My mother’s lips move, slightly. Once, twice.
She wants to say something, but the words don’t come.
but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember
that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
with tears.
Then it rises.
If only I had known, she says,
–– words halt, suspended––
while my eyes fill––
–– what you know now.
And at last, at long last, our tears stream together, one river.