letting go

the missing step at the top of the stairs

the nobody at the other end of having a catch

a call that doesn't come

an unrung bell

a cup unfull

unrumpled sheets, undented mattress

the text unreply absent the notification chime

the her-completed sentences unbegun

weighed against

the oaken firm footing

southpaw sailing toss leather bound

incoming incantations

clarion trumpeting presence

sonorously sounding

overbrimming nectar

gale force bacchanalia

gonging anagrams of U and I

subject predicate object desire

holding on for dear life

The Tell-Tale Clock

In the sunlit hallway, walking to what was hours earlier her room, I felt a coat of grief draped over my shoulders. This is going to be hard. Keep walking. Through the doorway, into the familiar room, where her stray molecules lingered and danced. Be quick. Jesus to his disciples, 'Let the dead bury the dead.' Scant days after the vigil, our shared presence and prayers, the mottled hands, her painted nails, the dry gulch, the vacant room.

A worker on the clock, I placed into a cardboard box artifacts curated from the nightstand's three drawers: greeting cards, hotel-sample-size packets of shampoo, sugar packets, a broken rosary, empty purses, photo postcards, 'rake' combs, hairbrushes, single mints in cellophane, toothpaste, skin creams, shoes, slippers, a keychain, crucifixes, an outdated page of monthly activities, an empty wooden box with ribbon and broken-seal sealing wax.

Do not tarry. The walls closing in. Trudge onward. Keep or toss. Toss or keep. Atop the nightstand, take and keep the plaster Jesus that silently kept watch with us, a family relic hearkening back to Dad and his holy rituals. Toss the shoes and slippers. Leave for donation the ones gifted at Christmas days earlier. Not as hard as I thought. Keep the exquisitely framed July portrait with her and the kids and me. 

From the closet, take a black and white sweater, a green patterned blouse, two vases, five plastic hangers. Leave the nightgowns, sweaters, pants, blouses to be cleaned and donated. Leave the incontinence underwear. Back to the nightstand: toss the dessicated red cyclamen and Christmas bouquet of cut bright flowers.

After a rapid-fire mental Ping-Pong, I grabbed the bedside alarm clock, hesitated in mid-air, and placed it in the carton. Take it. Keep it. The white still-ticking clock I bought so she could see the time, the hour and the minute, to face her as she lay in bed, sleeping, so much sleeping, or awake and awaiting a call, a visit. The alarm never used unless by accident. Why set it. And was it day or night. She barely knew. Black readable numbers. The relentless red second-hand stuttering its staccato circuit. Tick-tock-tick-tock.

From the bed, let's not forget the Creamsicle-colored luxuriantly soft blanket, a gift she cherished to no end, at the end; and the similarly velvet-soft gray pillow I got her for Christmas, which she may not have ever lain her head on. 

That clock. Why keep it. To what end. Take it out of the box and toss it. Toss it in the trash and walk out, carry the box to the car, put it in the trunk, and drive away. 

Which I did. 

Mostly. 

The box in the trunk. Drive around for 20 days. Open the trunk. Lift out the box, ride the elevator to the top, open the door. Open the box, retrieve old greeting cards to get addresses.

And the clock.

Tender time bomb tolling, o sole mio, stoic sentinel.

Tell-tale heart.

Hello, Mr. or Ms. Clock, you new resident on the Formica faux-marble countertop, the peninsula between my kitchen and living room. No man-woman-person is an island but is a peninsula, it has been said and sung. 

Which way to face it, where to place it. Do I muffle the roar of its ticking, wrapping it in a towel in a closet or in a bureau. Or under the floorboards. Or remove the battery. 

Smother it. Smash it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. 

What then.

What then. 

A silence, hollow or fulsome. A stillness saturating the sacred hours. Unsaid, unspoken. 

Inhaled, exhaled.

Hallowed.

Then sifted and settled. 

Into gentle spring rain.

Or, for now, perched on the peninsula, a presence a few yards from the ashes, across from the red-blossomed amaryllis, pattering.
 

The Weight of Absence

Morning rite, almost liturgical: three slices of Heidelberg Cracked Wheat, toasted, real butter on all three, not too dark, tan; one slice with Bonne Maman Raspberry Preserves. 

On this morning, in the fortnight tidal wake of Good Mother's passing, a succession of holes. Slices hollowed by air, by loss. Heart-shaped, one-half-inch diameter. Upper left, not perfectly duplicated as in an assembly line but discernible sameness just the same. 

With a hole silently skewering the loaf, is it still 24 ounces? 

How much does nothing weigh? 

What is the weight of absence? And at what cost?

Take this bread. Eat. Digest. Begin the day. Lighter than yesterday. And heavier, too. 

Twenty Verbs, II

On this the fourth anniversary of my brother's death, some participles and other forms for parting and otherwise:

1. grieving
2. remembering
3. raining
4. sitting
5. passed
6. wondered
7. said
8. mourning
9. missing
10. moving
11. breathing
12. exhaled
13. touched
14. tapped
15. laughed
16. cried
17. asked
18. answered
19. drifted
20. held

Between Silence and Scream

So, he was an English major, the mass murderer and suicide, and words were not enough to exorcise his demons. Words failed him. He failed in finding power enough in his violent and obscene words. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, he found the "time to murder and uncreate."

Last week, the topic in the U.S. was words and race and pain (or so I hear). I was in Berlin and saw in the courtyard at Humboldt University a plaque in the ground, amidst the cobbles, commemorating sadly the burning of books. Again, are words talismanic and dangerous? Or utterly futile? (Incidentally, do you recall what the tabloid topic was just before 9/11? Shark attacks. You can look it up.)

"Then how should I begin /To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?" (again Eliot).

This guy did so with bullets, finding words impotent to shape or hold or issue his rage.

"Unkennelled" shows up in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." What tragic dogs were unkennelled, unloosed, from this guy's tormented lair?

To my tiny mind, I see comparisons and similarities linking the Unabomber, Henry David Thoreau, and this guy. The rants against society, the unsparing "morality," the utter disappointment in human imperfection and injustice and moral decay. Of course, such a link is a stretch, a leap. The Unabomber was an anarchic, shadowy killer; this guy a long-simmering cauldron. And Thoreau had no bombs or guns.

I was struck by a passage in today's NY Times, quoting Lucinda Roy, a professor who taught Mr. Cho. She said he'd show up with a baseball cap pulled low, wearing sunglasses.

"He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses,"

she said.

Now many more people are crying behind sunglasses, or in the open air. Alone and always and forever.

Miserere Nobis

Yesterday evening, I walked in Burnet Park, the dog and I.

The day after the last day.

The first day after the last.

The robin's insistent trill, a solitary vespers.

The jet engine's ascending roar in the distance, like that cobalt-blue Tuesday morning.

The light settling like a warm blanket.

The robin's chant.

The dog's piss stain on a patch of snow.

My human odor.

A ghost of a freight train rumbling.

The presence of absence.

The forsythia's whisper of yellow.

The stubborn verdancy of grass.

A broken branch under foot.

A lone robin, a sentinel and mourner,

Near the top bony branch,

Singing arias for the misbegotten

And lost.