Crone
She was coming along from the cleaners, from Reid’s,
the second best in town, but then it closed,
someone there who sewed, could drop a hem, cut off the cuffs.
Then gone. For her it was a long walk. Trying to control the lurch of coat
that hung weighing on her, twenty year old coat,
acquired before her body began to crush her bones.
Determined, insect-like, she crossed Reid’s parking lot toward me,
I could see her muffled face, see it locked
but not oblivious to my stare. I imagined what light would fly
around her once secure beyond her own locked door.
no one can see me controlling;
what memories we’ll have tonight;
shall I invite them all in, right now,
all of them? Hiking? The view from Katahdin?
The children in firelight, that terrible raging boss,
those months when the color was gone?
Or the children, no we’ll not do that much tonight.
Tonight I’ll take just one, though tonight’s so far away.
Never mind. Tonight: me thirteen and naked after my bath,
deciding to see who I was in the mirror,
so bright and explicit showing me things I’d imagined,
and now I imagined more until, hearing my mother’s knock
or was it a knock on my heart I heard,
I folded my knowledge away to keep for later,
some more daring time — that light on my white skin,
my clear dark brows, long eyes, new hardware of hip and breast.
Her walk had brought her to the 24-7-anywhere-in-the-world
where I could see my partner through the new glass doors,
waiting for the owner, talking and shoving the boxes, so many boxes,
she was looking toward the truck parked just outside, nodding,
taking the pen and signing, half turned away,
the owner already turned to who came next,
but then turned back as if there was something they both forgot.
The crone crossed my line of sight, passed the mailer, approached a car.
Would she drive? She struggled with a key, got in, struggled
to pull shut the door, sat too low for me to see her as she drove away.
Not that I didn’t love me dressed!
That wedding gown! Its shining folds were like a book
with chapters I’d already read and chapters still to read.
And the chapter I read most is that one with him.
After seventeen years he’d come to me,
his voice is hoarse, he’d overheard I’d had that fling
and local gossip skims the scum and scum hit
like a weight against his chest would knock him over,
he’d suddenly seen he’d lose me, suddenly he loved me,
after all those years, stirred. Stirred in him the bottom
of what I never knew was there and this stirred me.
We’d never known such a thing was there
and came together as though we’d never had sex before,
and never had, not like that, so fierce between us
and for days and weeks and even after that its memory
that stayed between our eyes.
She’s gone. To what street, what house, what kitchen I’ll never know,
or need to know. My partner comes out of the 24-7
anywhere-in-the-world mailing shop, comes through the door
the owner holds. I watch her come with pleasure, her smile and step,
her Christmas errand done. She and I have no memories yet to take us
to our graves. “Ask if Mary is coming to lunch.”
This was a life ago and later, after her stroke, I looked into her eyes
and knew how trivial was that lunch. I said, “Shall I tell them
you love them?” There came her last and only words. “Yes.
That’s all there is. That’s all there is.” Her hand beat the white sheet.