Another friend said he waited for months
that turned to years after his father died
for a sign promised from the afterworld.
My friend said he would set up little traps:
if the light turns green . . . if the doorbell rings . . .
if the leaf falls before the count of five. . . .
Meanwhile his favorite maple shed its leaves,
replaced them, lost a branch in a windstorm,
burned gold—seasonal incarnations galore,
which my friend missed waiting for his dad’s sign.
These stories came when I was full of grief
about my own losses, wondering what,
if anything, my words could do for those
broken on the hard edge of the world.
Vanity, I thought, this is vanity.
Roll up your sleeves and do something useful!
But here on paper, I fit piece to piece
until the roses match, the cracks are sealed,
the cup fills to the brim, and over the brim.
Drink, my sad friends, be briefly whole again.
DEATH DAYS
It used to be we marked time with birthdays:
huge childhood parties with wedding-size cakes
to celebrate that season’s crop of cousins,
all of us dressed in costumes from countries
my grandparents had recently visited:
Mexican sombreros and toreador pants,
embroidered peasant blouses for the girls,
Dutch clogs and dirndled dresses with white caps,
silk saris, togas, grass skirts, Chinese thongs,
as if to meet the future in disguise.
But now it’s death that singles out a date.
May 30th, my grandfather set out,
nine years after my grandmother who died
September 5th—I like to think of them
as on another one of their long trips.
A conscientious colleague died June 3rd,
right after turning in her final grades.
May 24th, March 4th—the dates are piling up.
My dressy black dress never gathers dust
with old silk saris, linen caps, Dutch clogs.
And then the other anniversaries
of near misses: a childhood friend wears
a padded top that gives no hint at all
of what is gone now going on five years.
Our church’s mascot maneuvers so well
with her prosthetic leg her mom can quip
not even a crazed bullet slows her down.
And every year a day as yet unknown
which I won’t be here to enjoy goes by,
which is why now I celebrate each one.
ALL’S CLEAR
The blaster at the building site next door
comes by with the stamped permit: three whistles,
blast within five minutes; two whistles, within
two minutes; and finally my favorite,
one whistle, all’s clear. “Have a good day, ma’am,”
he says, departing. They call us ma’am,
these young boys with construction-worker tans,
whose daddies used to whistle compliments
at our young counterparts, before the ground
shifted, and our eternal youth came tumbling down.
The doctor checks the freckled skin and says,
nothing to fret about. He makes a map
of all my markings, a constellation
not in the sign of Cancer, but to be watched.
In the waiting room sits a box of knitted hats.
The sign reads, Help yourself. (I pick out one
for you, my balding friend.) The little tags,
handwritten by survivors, give their name
and last day of treatment—that sweet all’s clear,
a red light turning green, spring’s daffodils!
The first of every month, my husband checks
now one, now another breast, his eyes blank,
as slowly he palpates the soft tissue.
I hold my breath in dread of your surprise.
Thank you, I always tell him when he’s done,
as if he’d stood on line all day to get
my permit stamped, All’s clear, for now.—Meanwhile,
I wait for next door’s blasting to be done,
the ground to still, the sky to clear of dust,
for you to call—All’s clear for both of us.
NOW, WHEN I LOOK AT WOMEN
Now, when I look at women, I wonder
if a breast is missing, if a scar marks
the place like a pirate’s X on a map
where a lump lay buried. I look at their hair
cut close to the skull and I wonder if
the style was chosen for its trendiness
or if it signifies recovery,
first shoots after a long, hard winter;
wildflowers in the woods; dandelions
on the lawn; a birdfeeder full of birds.
Looking at women now, I also see
the ones who didn’t make it, tías, friends,
their faces surfacing in grocery stores
and drive-in windows, moms and bank tellers
whose carts I want to push, whose hands I take
as they tender deposit slips, at a loss
what to say: I’m so glad you’re here to spend
a moment of this autumn day with me—
while they eye me, wary, wondering
what social service agency to call.
Suddenly every girl seems vulnerable:
their female bodies specifically marked
with little black spots like the mortal sins
in my old catechism book, the fear of death
palpable as I turned the page and read
about absolution through the sacrament
of confession. But only the surgeon’s knife
and radiating beam might save these lives.
Even so, I can’t help this helpless love
for every woman’s child, daughter or son.
AT THE GYN
Seen from the parking lot, the building seems
an army barracks, every window lit,
with now and then a shape in uniform
casting a shadow as she passes by.
I’m glad it’s not one of those offices
on Main Street that pretends to be a house—
as if your pap smear’s one more household task
between the vacuuming and dinner prep.
I don’t want the false comfort of a home
these days when news is likely to be grim.
Open the door, a few women look up
and smile, as if relieved to see it’s me.
The waiting room’s in total disarray,
toys from the toy box kids never put back
when moms were ushered in for their exams;
end tables strewn with pamphlets dull with facts,
and oh-too-many women’s magazines
(most of them missing pages of coupons).
The bathroom’s stocked with napkins, just in case;
the seat is down—somebody thought of us!
Barracks aside, this is a female stop:
the mess, the changing table, the request
you pay your bills on time, a tactful sign
framed with a smiley face: Have a nice day!
Everyone here except a stray husband
or pacing boyfriend awaiting the results
is one of us—as if the world in which
we come to know our bodies should be kept
a place apart where we can catch our breath,
surrender to our lives and to our deaths.
GRAND BABY
My husband says, why don’t you write a poem
about the new baby, you’re the writer
in the family, birth is a big deal,
it deserves a poem, “new life,” etc.
Put in about her being born in spring,
on International Women’s Day—
now there’s a theme. I bet most poets write
about their kids and grandkids when they’re born.
You’re always scribbling about the past,
how about a here-and-now grandbaby?
Tall order but short notice, honey. I hate
to tell you but babies don’t need poetry.
We do, we, intelligent people,
gaga over the crib, which thankfully
has a guardrail to keep people like us
from crawling inside to recite something
appropriate & unnecessary. Silence
is the compliment here—stunned and abashed
and joyous silence, a quiet reply
to the noisy mysteries of the universe.
Hello, Naomi, how you doing, girl?
is the best I can do when I stare down
at her tiny, elegant hands and dream
a pen, a little baton, a steering wheel
in them, trying to match a future life
with her astonishing & perfect self.
But I’ve taken her silence as my cue.
Naomi doesn’t need a word from me.
I’m just a writer in the family.
I know real poetry when I see it.
LIFE LINES
Words I read years ago keep coming back
to calm me at the most opportune times.
Helping my parents pack for their return
back to their homeland after forty years,
my sadness lifted, murmuring a line
from Yeats, That is no country for old men.
When my niece told me she was marrying
a young man I wish I thought better of,
I almost said—but bit my tongue in time—
When lovely woman stoops to folly.
As Mom lay dying and I saw the light
receding from her eyes, the phrase popped up,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
and I felt comforted as if my grief
could be contained within that mournful line,
and yet I mourned the deeper for that line.
Often I crack and poetry seals the crack,
I’ve glued many a heartbreak with the phrase,
After so many deaths, I live and write!
which sets me up to love and lose again!
Unlike my Buddhist friends I’ve never found
solace in silence. Sorry, but I love
the way words say what can’t be said in words.
We fall and a brief quatrain breaks our fall.
A villanelle recalls us to ourselves.
I’m buoyed by poems that spring upon my lips
like prayers mothers whisper over cribs.
The winds of time would carry me away
but for the words which when my life breaks down
rise up and clap their hands and louder sing!
SPRING, AT LAST!
This is the first spring that I’ve noticed spring.
Incredible, I know, to miss so much.
Why did it take so long? Mom and Dad’s deaths,
a friend’s cancer, a cousin’s accident,
the Twin Towers, the war on innocents
(always the ones to pay)—the End seemed near.
Then, suddenly, a daffodil, a patch
of crocuses, bird fights at the feeder,
and back into the intact Towers flew
stick figures, like a film put in reverse.
Each morning I wake up and run outdoors
to check the stingy inching of the grass.
I holler for my husband to come see.
“You’re going to be the death of me!” he warns.
“I thought a hungry bear was after you.
Calm down. It’s annual. It’s only spring.”
But like a star’s light, beamed eons ago,
spring reached me just this year. I’m taking note
of peepers, pink skies, swatters back in use,
goldfinches, fiddleheads, forget-me-nots—
as if life really works in sad reverse:
when young, my youth got in the way—
my frizzy hair, my breasts not big enough,
my grand career that never seemed to start,
my many lovers who never appeared.
But now, amazing grace, I see, I see!
My life is giving me a second chance
as I take time to savor it at last.
All that I wasted, overlooked, bypassed
springs back whichever way I look, or write.
REGRESO
Late in his life, Papi forgets himself
and switches from his broken English
to his muy eloquente español.
My husband glances up at me,
flashing his monolingual SOS,
What’s he saying? Or talking on the phone
about his imminent regreso home
after four decades living in New York,
he starts to roll his r’s and sails off
into a stream of Spanish consciousness.
The family wonders if he should be checked,
if he’s regressing, if he’s showing signs
of early Alzheimer’s, as he rattles on
about his imminent return, ¡Por fin!
mi regreso a mi tierra. Ya yo estoy
cansado de traducción.—But I feel glad
that he is speaking in his native tongue,
after so many years of struggling
to bring all of himself into inglés,
and tell the great adventure of his life.
Now, he gives up midsentence, pours his sense
into the deeper cistern of his soul,
his native tongue—¡La lengua mas bella!
so he would tell me when in shame I’d beg
or rather (but I didn’t dare say this)
that he keep quiet to avoid their scorn.
Now, as your final regreso draws close,
cuéntanos, Papi, todo en español,
all that we lost of you in English.
IN SPANISH
Sometimes it touches me more when I hear
a phrase in Spanish rather than English.
We’re walking in the campo and a friend
warns me to steer clear of that thorny bush,
Esa mata hay que respetarla.
(That plant is one you have to respect.)
My old niñera answers my compliment
that she is looking younger every year,
Los años no perdonan a nadie.
(The years don’t forgive anyone, doña!)
She calls me doña who once ran my world—
proof of her point that time topples us all,
but her saying it in Spanish goes deeper
and stirs the sediment at the bottom
of my heart, so the feeling is stronger,
more mixed in with everything else I am,
swirling through both the thick and thin of me,
leaving nothing unfeeling which is why
I’ve been accused of overreacting
when I change countries and forget myself.
It’s puzzling then that I write in English,
as if I have to step back from myself
to be able to say what I’m feeling—
the way sometimes we have to get away
from the place we were born or from someone
we love in order to know who we are.
Yet as I write in English I murmur
the words over in Spanish to be sure
I’m writing down the truth of what I feel.
(Que escribo lo que siento de verdad.)
YOU
I love how English has a single you,
no tú, usted, no tr
ying to figure out
where strangers rank in the hierarchy
of my respect: Are you a formal
or familiar you? No asking permission
or apologizing if I get it wrong.
I love the true democracy of you.
The pampered son of the dot-com millionaire
or the coal miner’s daughter—all are you,
united in one no-nonsense pronoun.
Comforting when I write because it means
I’m leaving no one out, even a line
intended for an intimate includes
you, and also you. In this, my Noah’s ark,
everyone is invited and can board
in twos or threes or singly—those unborn
as well as ghostly antepasados
who used to be usted and now are dust.
At sea in mystery, we all become
human cargo down the generations.
Once you get used to you, all faces seem
to hold the face you love, each child could be
the one you never had, each girl the girl
you used to be or who your mother was.
You is inclusive like that Beetle ad
where linebackers kept piling into a car—
I forget what the point was, but I’d watch
and understand their yearning to be one.
Just as I once climbed into a second tongue
and it made room for me in its pronoun.
LEAVING ENGLISH
Before leaving English, I cling to words
I haven’t paid attention to in years:
dirndl and trill and sin, until the thought
of spending weeks without them is too sad
to think about. Come with me, I invite
my monolingual husband, so at night
you can whisper sweet nothings in my ears
against possession by my native tongue.
Even if Spanish made me who I was,
it’s English now that tells who I am.
You talk like an addict, my husband scolds.
Language is not a drug! (But I get high
working a line until I get it right,
like finding the last puzzle piece or bulb
that lights up the whole string of Christmas lights!)
My family claims that I’ve deserted them:
One thing is learning English, another