I’m like , 20 poems behind…
Discarding
There. I did it.
The last plant you left me
dry , brittle brown and now
resting on top of the compost heap.
I wasn’t nice about it.
Slow starvation
Slow dehydration
Slow prolonged ending
Standing by the window
uselessly waiting —-
for me to notice the need
the wanting , the water.
Just like you,
I can’t make anything grow
I can only kill —
and admire the cleanliness
of the window sill
in the absence.
Do you understand
that you were
Someone who understood him?
That he stood taller
Wanted me always to send to you
The work he’d done
That when you commissioned him
And paid him for his drawings
By buying him paints and brushes
Well, he was never prouder
An eight-year-old pride
That can barely be described
(The bridge. The pause. This is the blank space
in our lives where you chose door number 3—
there is a simple woman there, it’s not complex
she leaves the television running, her kid throws tantrums
take her to Oprah’s couch , she’ll be fine
the air isn’t clear but it’s constant , she’s as familiar
as your mother, in fact maybe it’s her—did you notice that need?
and you were your father for so long.)
FYI: We are still hiding in the forest;
there’s no road to our door;
it hurts to breathe up here;
yes, it’s that fucking clear;
we are parked in front of the fireplace in sleeping bags,
because we get weather here
surviving is our constant,
—but back to the poem…)
Recently, he was cleaning up his room
No new toys while the old are piled
In excavation heaps
A landfill on linoleum
My son knows the drill
He brought the thrift store bag to me
And it had everything
you ever gave him
A stuffed animal at his birth
The last happy meal toy
What was left of the dried up paints
From that moment you
Believed in him,
Showed him you understood
Him to be him.
And I had no words—
I’m not that kind of liar.
How can you tell a kid
Who loved somebody
He didn’t choose you?
Have published a poem from the new collection The Alzheimer’s Cul de Sac, “The Grandfather’s Secret.” I believe you have to subscribe to see it but it’s nice getting a bit of poetry in the inbox every week. Six of the poems in the collection have been published now. Anyone want to publish the collection?
