Three Poems by John Ziegler

 

In Prayers

After her funeral, memories arrived three on a mule:

Jansen’s History of Art on the leather-topped coffee table.

Her water colour of snap dragons on the window sill.

The kettle of Manhattan clam chowder simmering.

Her voice urging joy at first light on Sundays,

“Awake for morning in the bowl of night

has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.”

They closed off the hill on 24th street 

when the big snow closed the schools.

I remembered coming home frozen from sledding. 

She ran a hot bath in the old clawfoot tub

and brought me a hot mug of beef consomme.

It was warm and delicious.

Her soothing fingers scratched my back 

when I couldn’t sleep,

after my dog died.

She took me fishing when I was a kid.

I don’t remember if I caught any.

But it stuck with me. I never told her that.

Kids don’t tell parents those things that meant something,

those things that rarely happened, maybe just once. 

They don’t tell them thank you until it’s too late.

Then they tell them, in prayers.

She Was Everywhere

The ambulance driver

needed a signature.

The cop signed by proxy,

Mom unconscious on a gurney,

about to be taken to the hospital.

Robert arrived from British Columbia, 

Linda from Martha’s Vineyard.

We managed meals from the freezer 

along with repeated gin and tonics.

We found beds and spent the night 

half-awake, in disbelief.

In the morning we made our way to the hospital.

She was comatose beneath a thin blanket,

lost in a network of wires and tubes.

With her breath uneven, 

she quivered and winced,

curled her toes

under waves of pain.

In the afternoon the call came.

Sixty years of household goods 

to be winnowed.

She was everywhere.

Jars of quince jelly in the pantry,

feathered slippers by the night stand,

silver framed eyeglasses in the pocket of her bathrobe,

her recipe for coffee cake on the kitchen table.

We moved things from here to there,

sorted piles by purpose, found beds at night 

and woke early from disjointed dreams 

to a new day and the caustic reality that 

would not end.

Old Photos

In a grease-stained biscuit box in the attic

I find packets of old photos, 

some with names 

pencilled on the back.

Grandfather wears a brown fedora,

hoists a string of pickerel,

their soft slippery tails 

painting his boot.

In another he wears a necktie,

shirt buttoned to the throat,

as he cradles his shotgun.  

Two limp Chinese pheasants

hang from his wide belt.

A black cigar is clamped in his teeth.

In another picture Grandmother stares 

from a filigreed silver frame,

her ivory-yellow hair coiled,

a soft mole on her powdered cheek,

this grandmother I lived with,

took for granted like furniture,

now pale and shrunken,

no bigger than a child.

Soon relatives and friends

will arrive in Sunday clothes, 

silent in the hallway, 

dark carpets and heavy drapes,

the piquant smell of mums,

sombre organ music in the walls.

John Ziegler is a poet and painter who lives in a mountain town in northern Arizona.