Stuck
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight west
of the hospital, eyes fixed on the building
whose white walls witnessed your passing.
Death, grief, letting go--these are things
I have no reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
I can’t remember why we weren’t there
with you. I don’t understand
how I couldn’t know, standing there
at the stove, making pinwheel sandwiches
for a Friday brunch, that you were gone.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My reverie ends
and my foot responds. I make the left
turn by the CVS. Within seconds,
mind cogent and focused, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
************************************************
A rewrite. Too telly I think but more grounded
images. It's just good to write. If you stop by again, jim, let
me know what you think.
Here's another I'm working on. I think it has a long
way to go too. I am rusty, rusty and suffering from
major brain fog, but I shall keep trying to write. I've
always found it so cathartic and healing and helpful
and frustrating and amazing and fun and difficult, etc.
etc. etc.
************************************************
In A Quiet Room
The back rooms of this house
are quiet tonight. My son reads
The Moon Is Down as I watch a story
on television about widows and mothers
who've lost their lovers and sons in Iraq.
He calls me to his room to ask what genre
this Steinbeck novel fits and how to answer
a question like this: "List memorable quotes.
Tell why they are significant."
And when he reads the first quote to me
that he finds significant, a quote about
Dr. Winter, a simple man so profound
that only the profound recognize him as such,
I think of the widow on the television,
about the last night she spoke to her husband,
about the profound way simple things
like the weather and the holidays occupied
their last conversation. And all the while,
the winds outside were shifting, the weather
turning, the men inside never knowing that death
would become the dictionary to explicate profundity.
6 comments:
gosh. how far it ranges, and then how intimately, to embrace it all at once. this is fine work, maggie. poems, i think, should always set their parameters, and mark out the trail they wish to follow -- when we manage to hang tough and stick with them, this is the kind of excellence that occurs -- poetry that matters.
re stuck: i think it's much tighter and better organized, the various elements tying in more concretely and perhaps even more vividly. i particularly like the addition of the stove and the pinwheel sandwiches. i was thinking afterwards about the narrator not having a premonition of the death, and i was looking back at all those times when others seemed to realize things that i had no prescience about at all. how i have envied them. but too ... what good did it ever do for them that my ignorance didn't serve for me.
i don't know what people are trying to say when they use "telly" as a critical term. too naive, perhaps, too clumsy, too what? telling it instead of letting it live? whatever they mean, maggie, you aint telly, not a bit.
Thanks, you!
I so appreciate your reading this again, jim. I think the poetry teacher I had years ago did a number on my head. He would generally tell me I was too telly or had no affinity for how a poem "looks" on the page. He was good. A good poet and in many ways a fine teacher, but it's taken me so long to feel comfortable with my work. But, hell, I can't blame him for that. I have a hard time just because I'm me and tend to beat up on me.
Glad you like the changes. I think they helped. Maybe a little more tweaking at some point, but it's just about where I want it.
Oh that jim. I thought you meant me.
Better so -- my feedback is pretty slim these days.
I did play with your poem -- if I ruined it, apologies. Just keep what you've got.
Tonight, the southbound sings relentlessly.
I hear and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome was comfort
in each whistle blow.
Pain becomes immeasurable.
At the stoplight west of the hospital,
my eyes fix on the building
whose white walls witnessed your passing.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it
too many times to count since that last night
in April. Still, I can’t remember why
we weren’t with you. I don’t understand
how I couldn’t know, standing there at the stove,
making pinwheel sandwiches for a Friday brunch,
that you were gone.
The light changes to green, the color of new.
Turning left by the CVS,
I marvel at the way a body keeps moving,
long after the dying, too soon for forgetting.
jz,
You didn't ruin the piece. You took out a few words which I added in the rewrite that I questioned when I added them. I can make this sing at some point, I think. The heart of it's here, but my heart's still all over the place.
Thanks for reading and for your suggestions.
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