from Home Fires (1997)
One day it will not be enough
to make perfect pesto, cinnamon coffee,
and know every little club on Jackson Avenue.
All this you've learned in secret, striking out
on your own. I've said the usual mother things:
There are men downtown who would crack
you open, leave you drying on the curb.
Where will your pearl be then?
I've said, One day you'll see,
as you counted your bus tokens.
One day you'll look in the mirror and see
only furniture. You'll feel a great hole
in your heart, a weight in your pocket.
You'll take these crumbs, drop them
by an ancient moon and, in your darkest hour,
find yourself at my door.
I'll take you to the clock on the mantel.
My grandfather used to scavenge the alley
for his clocks. That one's made of bedposts.
He drank, people called him weak.
I watched him work, a carpenter's hands
hiding his bottle when I came too close.
Four daughters, no sons, something less
than a man. As a girl, my mother must've heard
him stumbling in, the raucous chiming
greeting him like children.
Now light the eye of the stove and smell
my grandmother's kitchen. I'd stand shivering
till she struck the long wooden match.
On Saturdays she bought gladiolus
for the altar, for the quick and the dead.
We walked through the hothouse, our palms
brushed yellow for forgiveness.
In the dense geranium air
I clung to her dress like a bud
at the moment of birth.
All week she cut buttonholes
at the Allen Garment Factory.
Thirty years of service,
the diamond pin says.
Up at five, lighting the flame,
her hands planed smooth by the zig
and zag of broadcloth.
I have her hands, people say,
a woman who lived her faith.
She believed in the diamond pin,
in the thirty years. She believed in
his clocks after he died. She forgot
the man who sang to his shadow
and bragged on him finally being saved.
Sometimes I'll turn on the gas, a smell
so sweet I'll turn to hold her dress.
One day all this will be yours:
You'll sit at a vanity, her milk-glass lamps
on either side. You'll take her diamond pin
from the drawer and rub it like a token.
The moon will look new, you'll get up
while your daughter is asleep
to hear the soft ticking.
And with your whole heart
you'll know where you've come.