After the Divorce
I never saw the farm
crying with winter’s ice.
On humid summer morns
my mother headed south
as far as Illinois.
We kids knew we’d arrived
when apples red as blood
reached out from leafy boughs
like father’s unseen arms.
The ancient house rose up
its peeling boards beside
a crumbling dying barn.
A crooked creek-bed wound
round willows weeping tears
whose steadfast roots removed
my sorrows and my fears.
I bent my ears to hear
“it’s time to eat peach pie,”
my grandma’s voice like wind
through rusty farmhouse screens.
With soaking barefoot feet
we ran beyond the chicks
who clucked at us; we passed
the shed that kept things hid
a broken bike, some junk,
old tools and tractor wheels.
That farm provided me
a million mysteries.
Once uncle used his axe—
chopped off a chicken’s head.
We never told our mom
how days at grandpa’s farm
taught us cruelty as well
as love, beauty as well
as gloom, and love cut short.
I never saw the farm
covered in snow, but ice
and cold were lurking there.
Softball, 1936
My mother’s
gone
who used to
hurl softballs
from first base
in onetwothree
seconds
all the while
the umpire
shouted “Out!”
but she never
took a bow
to thunderous applause
and what I want to know is
if there’s a ball field
where she is now because
I know
she’s still wearing those
baggy jeans and loose
blouses
still has her right foot firmly
glued to the ground
The Art of Losing
Mom liked any kind of game,
you name it. Football, Diving,
Baseball, Dominoes. She was a
great swimmer and first base player.
Sometimes she practiced the skill of losing,
and she pioneered a trail into the future, to
inventions that really matter to women.
She invented perseverance.
She didn’t take out a patent, but it’s
obvious she discovered it on those
lonely winter nights in Wisconsin
without a husband by her side.
Women invented many items that
men wouldn’t, like the dishwasher.
Or a globe of the world—Ellen Fitz,
1875. And I owe thanks to Mary Walton
who in 1881 figured out how to reduce
noise in New York City’s railways by
lining the tracks with sand. That’s likely
why I barely registered my Dad's departure
in 1951 as he rumbled away, out of town.
A silent leaving, more or less. Besides,
Mom kept the radio loud, tuned to sports
on Saturdays and Sundays when we might
have been preoccupied with waiting for Dad.
Later, we tuned the television set to watch
games—Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee
Brewers. Every weekend we cheered the teams
to victory. Winning was everything.
The year my dad took off, the Brewers
ended the season with 94 wins and 57
losses.
My family had lots of time to witness
perseverance, and when the team lost,
Mom reminded us, “That’s the real Art.”
Ruminations
I read once that
the universe will
upon our death
generously split
in two,
and in one we
are alive.
I keep thinking
my mother and
my four sons
and even my ex-husband
the guru of laughing
may some day
be found again.
All my sons at ten
played the piano
intensely
different
songs but still
piano keys bobbed
like black and white
chess pieces dancing.
Like snow swirling on
broken tree branches
fallen on the ground.
I wonder in which
universe we will all
one day, be playing
a piano and in which
one we’ll be laughing.
Metaphor
books sit inside bookcases
so religiously upright, stuffed
with words and knowledge—
that small crackling sound
when I open one…a priest
clearing his throat
