The Solder of Limb Shade, remembering my mother, five years on

My mother is five years gone this day.  
Two years ago, I wrote this poem for her.  
It still belongs to her.

The Solder of Limb Shade

Where you are is not

where you are,

beneath the granite bench

and the heart-footed deer,

under cover, under the solder

of limb shade.

You are not sunk you are not skidded past

by wind.

You are not level, rise, diaspora, root,

nor the chime, pretty as it is,

above the stone field and its tulips.

But once, in a restaurant,

they played your song,

and the house that I have built from almost nothing

is hung about with birds.

You gave your final word

to me.

You said.

You are.

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by my mother's stone, by my son's side

This is the last Christmas that we'll call our son a student, or that he'll think of himself that way.  I am aware of the passing of each day.  I gladly accept every hug.

I gladly accept, too, his heart.  His willingness to rearrange this very afternoon so that he could join me in a winter trip out to my mother's grave.  In two days she will be five years gone.

"But you're so busy," I said, when he offered to come.

"No, no, Mom.  I'm not too busy.  Not too busy for that."

We stood before her stone, a polished red granite.  We placed a basket of greens by the stone.  We remembered her out loud, one to the other, and then we walked this path to the car.

He understands honor, this beautiful, grown-up kid of mine.

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Easter Day

And the chimes broke free from the stone tower and fell. And the birds were high on the wind.

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Remembering my Mother, at Christmas

Except for this blog, I am not writing. I am reading, I am thinking, but I am not writing. If you were to ask me to write a poem I would say that I have no knowledge, at all, of poems—though of course I have written poems, some version of me has written poems, hundreds of them, journals full of them, but: How does one write a poem?

And if you were to ask me how a story gets made I'd ask you in return, What is a story? What does a story need? How do stories survive? I would ask, because it feels just now as if I don't know, as if I could never know, though some version of me has written dozens of stories, maybe hundreds, if you count tangents, drafts, revisions.

It is the holidays, and I am not writing; I am remembering. I am thinking about my mother at Christmas, all those Christmases (oh, how my mother loved Christmas) until her final Christmas, when she wasn't well and when it was my father and me every day for weeks in her ICU room. She was lost to us already, and yet I refused to believe, I held to the idea that she could hear me as I read aloud, that she could see the presents I brought for her—the handmade sweater, the ceramic tiles, the glamorous cooking ware, the roses (one for each of her children), the ornaments, the music and the machine that played the music.

Look, Mom, I would say. Mom, Look.

My mother loved Rod Stewart, and I am remembering that, and I am remembering how we filled her ICU room with his music, and how we waited for her to show us, somehow, that she could hear him. Hear us.

Sometimes I can remember, only. Poetry lives beyond me somewhere. Stories, too.

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A Day of Remembrance, and No Words

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