Wednesday 21 December 2016

coming home

It is a brave thing, swans in winter.
They are going up the part of the mystic river that still flows,
A small triangular path between plains of silence,
Bobbing cold feet beneath the surface and churning about with a calm air,
A dead air, a wind that does not stir. And on the ice their children sing.

In a dream state I sit in my filth outside terminal B
Hoping not to cry.

On the drive home, bottles of liquor chatter softly on the floor—
And my father points out the beauty of a tattered American flag
Clipping east across the bridge we’ve crossed twice
Trying to find the new mall turning Somerville gold.

“It’s too much,” he says. I am not sure if he means
for him, or for her, or for them together.
But my body understands that he is right
And once again begins unpacking itself to make room
For what is to come.

Some things have grown smaller. The pear tree
Beside the house has lost all but one branch.

When I enter the house, my mother isn’t there for the first time.
Pictures hang along the walls of the ones who are gone.
Mi shebeirach for the living in this house. Where they walk,
So love goes. I have spent 7 years
Singing my mothers songs into a darkness
Whose contents seem to hold no domain here, not now. I open
the front door to the sun. It is so warm

I can smell the resin of the pine.

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