| Bind Up My Life Mama Earth Days Page 8 |
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| Clan....Continued |
| By the time of her son�s death Her tears had turned inward She kept her own council It was the death of her daughter, though, That did her in�. A daughter who wanted to come home A daughter with glaucoma A daughter afraid of growing old Alone�. My grandmother told her to gut it out, Or so the story goes�. Then she died, Alone. She wasn�t found for two days The casket was closed Another irony - that she should have died In this way Transformed into swelling dead flesh She was extremely vain She lived in Chicago She had a studio apartment On Lakeshore Drive She was an X-Ray technician She was a mistress She had English china Spode, Fitzhugh Blue A Wedgwood Breakfast Set Liverpool Birds She had a tailor who made her dresses She sewed designer labels in them She saw the need for salt cellars She showed me Old Town At night In the summer heat When the artists still painted in alleys And jazz flowed from the doorways Every Spring she arrived home Full of demands For the Spring cleaning Drapes were changed From Winter to Summer ones Windows were washed Two prickly ferns In two concrete urns Were carried from the upstairs bedroom To their summer home, The porch. This task was assigned to the uncles In � Laws Muttering obscene complaints Under their breaths In later years, each feigned Infirmities And went to swing on the ditchbank The sisters were left to improvise |
| Every year at Easter, She and my grandmother Exchanged a card� The same card, year after year Back and Forth With something new added � A poem A thought A blessing It was their connection To overcome the distances. Her things after she died, Cardboard boxes of things, Were kept behind the bed And in the dresser drawers In the front bedroom. Exotic hats with feathers Fox Furs Gloves Relics Not to be touched Or seen Just held in suspension And now, so is the clan.. A relic in suspension� There is no matriarch There is no consort We who remain will be left With just the shadow of memory Outlining its shape in our minds Time and circumstance Have seen to that� The blood lines will go on Under different flags Different names� But the clan will be gone�. That is my black cloud, looming. Shapeless now But growing�. What shape will I give it? What bits and pieces Will I cling to And make my own? I don�t know where To begin�. |
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