Santa Maria ora pro nobis.
– from The Litany of the Saints
(i) Annie the mother
Perched on the edge of Terry’s bed, half-turned,
like the lady up on the needle-nosed horse on the wall
in the nurse’s room. Riding crop in her fine-boned hand.
A groom attending keeps a wary eye on the hand.
Unlikely pose for his mother, more hers the solid stance,
slapping dough or clanking shut the stove lid.
Or square above the boards against the sky, wearing
her husband’s galoshes. Her fierce gaze follows
the ankled-over hiving on the rink below.
The room that Terry shares with his older brother.
And over Mitch’s bed, a grinning Turk Broda jokes trouble
away, and Frankie Brimsek coolly measures the camera.
Mr Zero. The shutout king. Moonlight shifts across
the bedroom walls, asking Terry where
his brother is tonight.
Across the room a badly made bed.
That morning, Mitch was up and out to shovel
the backyard rink before he went to work.
His goal pads dragged across the room’s dividing line.
The sausage folds, straps that Mitch would
angle out a leg to fasten tight.
Leather’s reassurance.
Her hand smooths Terry’s unmarked brow.
Not for her the expectation of a country life, of riding
side-saddle into the drizzling woods,
sherry after, a crackling fire.
(ii) the nurse from northern Mexico
A ceiling fan ticks over, shifting
weighted air. White blouse leaning over
close and white, the desert moon. Her eyes and face
as dark as mine. Your pads are put away, she says and smiles.
A practised hand slides up my leg, removing the last
of my gear. I glimpse the mischief in her eyes.
Heartless, mothers, always clean socks, you never know when,
but what have we here? Lawdy. Short pants
and a garter belt. In Texas too.
That night I dreamt about the rink
behind our house, my friends gone home,
and my father dragging a hose along the bank to flood the ice.
She woke me through the night to cool me off, a cloth on my face
like ice in the crease when you first go down.
(iii) the woman and the famous wind
And one who seldom slept our few short nights
together over the years. I see the dates blocked out
on her calendar—Wings in Town. Older part of Chicago,
hunching brick in the wind. Put off the bed, the cat sits
a moment drowsy, dishevelled, then starts to wash
himself. Pretends it’s all one to him.
Her fingers brush over my face. She knows
my history, travelling from scar to scar. Brow to cheek
to chin. Naming names.
Her soft insistent voice, the tone you take
with a nervous animal. I sense her shifting over me
in the dark, her leg lifting carefully over my face.
A marvellous hinge a woman’s hip.
Her whisper grows harsher, blends with traffic
in the rain.