It was a long journey through the passes
between the mountains. It took days.
I had to stop often to water the horses,
to find places for them to graze.
They told me I was a fool to keep six horses,
but they’re all I have of Father’s,
them and his old red flannel shirt
and hunting trousers that I wore all the way.
I tucked my hair up into his cap, too.
Not that I was afraid–Father taught me
how to shoot, and more than one man
has felt my knuckles on his jaw–
but I figured it would be easier, pretending
to be a man–nobody would stop to help.
I didn’t want help. I didn’t get much
when Mother died, and I didn’t get any
They took me in: kind.
I took their name; Their Jesus-
mark in the center of my forehead.
They gave me future; I took it
in both my hands: hiding, silence,
all of it, the price.
No picture of my parents.
I cannot now remember
their faces. But the parting:
my mother did not cry.
Go, she said, just go.
My father would not release
my hand. We’ll bring him back
the woman said, over and over:
I promise. We’ll bring him
back. When this is over
Today is cold, but there is no wind.
I found a robin redbreast, frozen, by the water.
It made me sadder than usual.
They caught Willow, in the forest.
She had gone early, to pick new blossoms.
People get careless; people forget so soon.
I dreamed I swept the churchyard,
brushed the pebbles into piles.
There were no candles anymore.
The children were playing at hunting
in the spring meadow this morning–
stalking one another,
smelling, tasting the windy air.
It felt good to laugh again–
the first time since Grandmother–
since she’s been gone.
It was such a little thing,
with its soft spotted hide
and pointed feet.
It lies there now, nearly invisible
in the brown leaves,
its little chest opened,
ribs cracked,
its child-sized heart cut away.
I was a twig of apple
torn from my tree–
it bled.
Trimmed and grafted
I was fed
foreign sap like bitter water.
In spring, the bees.
My petals fell
but I did not die.
In autumn
I wonder why
other branches
bear yellow fruit
while mine,
on every swollen fingertip,
is red as blood.
Gram came down to live with us after Mother died.
Mother fell down the stairs and hit her head, Gram said,
but I was really little, so I don’t remember.
Anyway, Gram came from up there, the other side of the river.
Folks are different up there, they live different,
don’t visit much. It’s like they’re on their own.
We were always poor, but Gram made the best of everything:
drapes out of sheets, dresses out of drapes,
dinner from whatever was at hand–squirrel sometimes.
She was a real good shot.
When my sister cried for a dressing table
Gram made her one out of an old carton,
covered it with some magazine pictures she saved
and stuck on a coffee can lid for a mirror.
They said she was a pretty woman
Snow falls steadily as years.
The city sounds like shovels on cement.
Breath rises everywhere;
there are no roof rakes to be had.
Plows push drifts into driveways
and mailboxes are toppled and crunched.
The shovelers will never manage.
I walk the city and watch them work.
Snow falls on their shoulders
and follows them down the streets.
My mother’s things are left:
books and letters, chairs.
The box of birthday cards to send.
Blouses and bracelets,
unlabeled photographs.
Flowered sheets, German crystal,
Red worms have returned to the garden
and I am taking good care of your little dog.
Oh, I don’t know how to use power,
nobody here knows.
Every spring is warmer, every winter
filled with stranger snow. When I close my eyes
I see yours, the bewilderment. I hear you
telling me I resemble your daughter
and I remember my answer.
All your children are confused:
why the rain comes so hard or not
at all, why the bats are dead.
The oceans would turn against us
but they have no place to go.
I’ve buried your dust, sold your things,
but I know there will be no ending.
Mop, mend, make pies, bathe the children.
A burden to be unequally yoked.
Dig up a lily and plant it in the yard.
Every day subject to the same blight.
A beautiful day, long to be remembered.
Henry cleans harness in the kitchen.
All attend service but Helen and Grace.
War bread, two meatless meals.
Tuttle takes down the stove.
Mend the stockings. Make mince pies.
Henry carries Grace to her school.
Terrible fighting in France.
Ruth and I kill and dress two hens.
Dreaming among my poems.
Sick headache. Go down street.
Anna receives a silver spoon.
I was conceived at the crossing
where three ways meet.
My father was a shadow
cast by the moon.
The midwife who tended my mother
gave her an iron key to keep,
and I keep it still. My mother
was small and often afraid.
She baked bread and pies
in the king’s kitchen;
we slept by the fire,
curled on the hearth.
My mother’s hair was dirty
and long, her eyes the color of cinders.
Her skin was white
and streaked with ash, her hands
The year they found her bones
my son was riding my hip.
The year they found her bones
he learned to sing, sitting on my lap:
Row, row, row your boat,
life is but a dream.
I watched him climb the chairs,
he practiced stairs. We made faces:
Can you make a happy face?
Angry? Silly? Sad?
He learned to say please and thank you,
the intricate gaze and glance.
Sentences grew long.
He found meter and rhyme,
the spine of his stamping dance.
Raising little hominids
Outside the North Rim Lodge where the telephones connect,
people strolled by with their water bottles and maps.
They bought coffee and called to their children.
A man in tight jeans and beads played a guitar and sang off key.
I sat on the curb and talked
to the people back home in Vermont:
my sister, my brother, the doctor in the ER.
To my mother one last time.
The canyon eroded behind me
while my husband cancelled the train
and called Southwest.
I sat on my pack on the pavement, while he returned the rental car.
Through the gray noise, exhaust, confusion of taxi and talk,
one pigeon bobbed, tipped between luggages and wheels,
one pink foot in front of the other, picking scraps and crumbs.