Finding My Way Back
When I was a child, fairy tales gave me hives.
Hansel and Gretel must have known
bread crumbs could never lead them home,
casseroles for the dead are crusted over with them.
Better to save those crumbs for starving days
than try to unravel a swoop of crows.
Surely the conspiracy of parents was right there
in front of that raggedy pair,
striding on such skinny legs
that no distance would ever bridge their hunger.
Still, I rooted for them, all the while knowing
they were truly lost.
The witch was the only helpful guide,
I could breathe again once she entered.
You need something real to fight against and finally
she brought it.
Like little birds captured in their own ribcages,
they sang together then.
Fear is opera and she was a cackling diva in black
delivering on a big scale.
She led them to strike back
and for that she must always die.
By the end I could unclench.
It turns out ok.
The things you know will fail, will fail.
There is always a brother or sister to share that trip.
In eating the bread of suffering, you are never alone.
Then too there are the eyes
of those who should have loved you,
looking away, turning the heart inside out, a wrung wren,
a stone skipped on an open wound, the splay of want,
the ache of the kiss fist you just have to face.
But in the end
Trust the Witch,
Trust the Witch.
Previously published by Silk Road spring 2007
*****
She Waves Goodbye from the Window
Beneath the suggestion of skin,
an intricate genealogy of bone,
blue bloodlines map
the back of your hand.
For years you were shielded, sheathed
in perpetual and proper white gloves,
until, unveiled, the skin became
a gentle drape of gauze, soft crepe.
Mama, even as you began to fade
into spidery scrawl of your
earlier signature self,
there was a delicate force.
Your last wave lifted and lighted,
brought back a cool touch on summer evenings
when fireflies winked beyond the screens.
Soft, soft as a lullaby, your hands.
First published by Smartish Pace reprinted by Sunspinner online journal
*****
In Avon
for my mother Mary Gray Sylvester (1928-1984)
My mother was part of the landscape
her eyes bluer than sound or ocean
her sandy hands catching us up
one day in 1969 she sat
on a bleached out piece of driftwood
long enough for a photograph
to catch her between sky and sea
In the village the oval ESSO sign creaked
above the abandoned service station
the village idiot walked the streets
muttering under his breath
in some strange tongue
we would follow giggling, at a distance
all the way to Gray’s general store
dimly lit and full of poor-boy-cakes
fireballs, sweet tarts
on the way back
past the harbor, rank with the smell of fish
past the church, with its ominous bell
past the brambly blackberry bushes
we’d come to her home
the big house with the banisters
the iron beds, cement cistern
and fig trees
a curious Eden
the primary ground of her existence
In Avon my mother walked
barefoot through her girlhood
years later we followed her paths
dug in the clam beds
caught the lightening bugs
sneaked out after dark to count stars
or spy on adults
sitting around the kitchen table
with their mugs of coffee and conversation
Each summer we returned
as if by instinct, to Avon
where the frogs filled the air at night
with a terrible noise
shiny green they’d climb the screens
and cling there
my mother floated moon-like
in our doorway
she’d remind us to say our prayers
before she said good night
Previously published in Tar River Poetry
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