metonymy4u

The only woman left to defend nobility these days
wakes each morning to the sound of
her water heater, straining against an inadequate
power grid to bring in her dose of daily relief.
She smells old coffee. A piece of bread
is still downstairs from last night’s dinner.
She walks by the river most of the time, quietly reciting
what she can of Pushkin’s verse in Russian. Who
was like a father to her.

What she remembers.

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Just before we died I liked how calm felt
locked away in the old trees. Do birds
die on the way down?

Or do they sense it quickly and find a bed of moss?

I only ask because it seems I remember sounds, nearly,
that still curl round the twigs of the Meyer lemon
tree you planted after we moved in some
20 odd years ago.

I’ve already said good bye for you

to all the trees in your yard—the impossible pine, the maples
and the transplanted fern. Listen to poetry whenever you can, ok
Dad? It will help you not miss me so much.
O if only wishing were wise enough.

But it’s your life I can’t stop loving.

And I’d rather leave before you arrive. I’d rather die
alone in the desert than see all this happen again.
Though I know the peace you’ve earned is the forever peace.

Dad you’re my oldest friend—let’s go
on talking about things forever.

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I’m still not you on the night you died,
despite months of trying since a man
came for you and the two of us stood around
in your bedroom talking about you for a while without
permission. Strange how we loose all our rights
eventually. Strange how no one
cares.

He knew what to do, a man
who saw you only once but still packed
your body carefully in plastic after putting
on a pair of the gloves you always kept in your room
to clean up after yourself.

Who will do this for him someday I wondered.
Who for me.

He gave me your watch and wedding band.

I never wore mine because I couldn’t tolerate cold
strange objects on skin. Maybe I’ll save yours.
Drink some water he told me
when he left.

I’ll take good care of your father.

To the mountains
I said if this wasn’t for your ears
then why were you listening?

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Your eyes were as wide as the night you died in,
ushered along like the choices I hated. What funeral
home to use or how to notify people you loved.
                                                          What to say.

Your skin blue and transparent without its heart, a sky forgotten
opened its arms to a long dead child and church bells
laughed at me alone.

No one stood in line anymore.
No one handed out loose change. You were
the only one who still watered your lawn
at night. And who were we

to burn your body like it was trash?

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With your fingers I follow spell dust on tables
in the house where only sun and sunlight leave their mark,
looking for the lies I know you told yourself
to make night go faster.

When I was 17.

I wish someone had warned me then how suffering
is the only teacher of itself and causation. How cheated
of sight finally Cézanne learned to draw only what he saw
through both eyes.

I would not stage manage even the rain.

Though I worried storm fronts were nothing
but an excuse for wandering under a castle we discovered
to delay your departure by bus in separate directions,
never to love again. Lastly, I whispered to the road that death should keep my promise.

That a dream wine you should drink to guard your door.

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When you kiss me I can’t stop kissing you.

You make me want to write a poem line by line,
bowl a set backwards, knit a cashmere novel or two.

If I die in my sleep will you close my eyes and remember me
to a lively word or two?

Hush, they know the way
through metal, war and paradigm drift—
a long lazy corner for innocents. Just too much for some.

It’s a shadow bombed morning before I walked the dog.
It’s a nature ripped town that tells me what I want:

the darkness of the sky again. Yet another child.
I want a world with no love of fear and no
fear of love. I want another dawn.

But canter gone is the sign of distress.
Hoping I can be a different person
is the clarity of despair.

Please the lord,

are there gifts
so pure even the giver doesn’t get them?

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The sound of thunder

on the hills made me
think everything was being doubled.
Does it sound that way to you,

is everything doubled? He

got a call from his girlfriend
that sent him over the edge. Why’s
not important.

Everybody talked about him later

and laughed like we do at misery.
Like

when we’re nervous or feel superior.
You can turn away,
and leave them to it because they won’t laugh

when some day death hears them breathing in the dark.

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I moved to obviate the center.
I did it with my whole body. The center did not care.
I decided bias is not the length of a voice.
Harmony does not hold its breath. A psalm
is a garden that hardly knows its fate. I wanted more than stale bread. I wanted to cook with cardamom and nutmeg.

Does the eye make the thing it sees? Does sound uncover being?

Pesach is a lazy time of year when people scream.
We do the work of god

and pretend she has no ear. Try to sit
for any time not meditating. Try to understand the vastness
already upon her mind.

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all that ancient
history turned indispensible
lies,
i saw what
centuries did
to the ones i loved:
faces,
tired of living from
the inside
turned themselves out
for some wine and cheese
and,
the party concluded,
with their daughters they
sailed down the horizon
into
their pasts.

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does god hear the voice he makes
does the ear make the sound it hears
do today and today and today care
that salted snow is on the banks of rage
melting far below

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