The porch bed; poems
i.
picking a slow, uneven way through trodden iced-over paths
taking others’ footsteps in their frozen footprints
laughing
I hadn’t thought to wear boots with better traction
that hadn’t been on my mind
when I gathered myself up this morning
dressed myself all up and painted on the face
curled the hair, applied even layers of mascara I hoped wouldn’t drip off
fooling even myself with my get-up.
---that today was just like any other.
there were lessons to be had, a new student!
arias to fuss over and schubert to pick apart. audition looming and
no time for a lack of focus or motivation
no time to wander aimlessly fussing with the remnant pinging stinging memories of my latest
romantic foil, just yesterday actually. a saturday, for coffee.
a true dud, this time,
definitely wrong.
I can say I’ve done that now, back to poor musicians. I’m sure I’ll find my velveteen tinsel-strung heart already held softly and hesitantly by some humming pianist
or tentative violist. listening, searching, wondering if he can keep it. if I’ll let him. if we’ll harmonize. if I’ll go flat if he tries to jump the fifth. he’ll learn I won’t, if he sticks around long enough. I tend to be the patiently waiting one in these tails.
there’s something to be said for perseverance. I’m good at that, I don’t wear out that easily. it’s a gift my mother gave me, durability. high pain tolerance. no need for percaset, take it away, twist the ankle back in place. just a groan, they said. 180 degrees, they said.
she birthed all five of us without anything.
natural they say.
hot damn, I say. but I’ll probably go the same way.
it’s what we do --- we remain. bitter. strong, we remain.
my great-grandmother divorced her husband right after world war one. or during? it’s always been fuzzy history for us.
my grandmother kept hers, but became a bit of a tyrant when he died and reigned for 25 years enjoying the quiet and the disappearance of the systemized engineer who needed breakfast at just the same time every morning, even in the summer.
he built a glass-bottom dingey so he wouldn’t have to swim around looking for the chains to our mooring stones, straight out from the boathouse doors.
Barb, BARB!!! He’d call once he found them, and make my mother, the eldest, go diving for the bottle affixed to the end of the chain.
I never met the man. I haven’t a single memory. But we keep the little pornographic pictures of his up in the boathouse in the back left corner by the light switch, they’re funny. I like the ladies, I’ve named them Fiona and Eloise and Daphne. They tell me Grandfather smoked cigars often and bent over his work, not whistling, sometimes forgetting to breath and sucking in a huge draw of air when an idea fell into his head just the right way. They assure me, he loved Grandma, it was a real romance. I don’t know one way or the other but I nod and tell them their dresses are sure looking fine today.
---I sigh and hope but it’s over and they’re gone, so what does it matter.
Nowadays I’m the only one who takes out his canoe, the one who didn’t know him, and it’s my time with him. I oil the beauty down once a summer-- two coats. My annual granddaughter-grandfather time. My solitary tradition.
To me, the canoe is heaven, its heavy beautiful hand-carved Canadian self rising out of the cool 7 or 8 am foggy water.
My great-grandmother, she divorced her husband, my grandmother, she kept her husband, and my mother, she divorced hers.
We all come from the same school
The pattern goes ---
I wander on.
ii.
long wharf up ahead,
I’ve made it.
it’s shittily dark and I’m cursing my flimsy fashionable leather boots.
I cannot slip again. doctor still can’t fathom why everything broke so evenly -- should have been a sprain
I take my moment and watch the planes come and go.
breathing in, breathing out.
counting to four and holding it
one two
three
four.
I tell my students, these exercises, you can do them anywhere.
The sailboats moored in their places.
I’m twelve, coming out to sail with mom. We stop at the small place by rowes wharf not rose wharf but rowes, how terrible is that, not rose, but we stop for creamy chais I’ll never taste something like that, I search but the chai latte isn’t right and the chai isn’t right and the dirty chai is very wrong
I hate the jellyfish and the smell at the dockside but love the wind, even cold, even now, I hug myself, drawn in, drawing in color and sound and sensation and telling myself at least I am alive.
that’s one of the things he told me. That I’m one of the few people who live every day completely alive.
what the fuck other way is there.
iii.
sailboats. i never got it. my mother wanted to spend her entire weekend on one.
my grandmother spent entire days monologuing about whether or not to go out on hers.
my great-grandmother i don’t know what she did about sailboats but I’m sure she could tie any of the damn knots in her sleep.
But grandma sally, she’d sit on the dock for hours, calling back to my mom
Barbara, wouldja help me rig it? I think I’ll go while it’s blowing from the West.
Oh, nevermind the wind! It’s dying! I missed it.
Barbara! Well maybe tomorrow.
Every day, she’d wait all day. Watching and listening. Testing the air, reading the barometer.
Only in the middle of the afternoon, just as everyone was about to rush off to something else,
would she march in and declare I’m going sailing! and we would jump up and race around and bicker and mom would become Captain Barbara to the helm
and my day would be ruined.
I learned to be absent, summer afternoons.
iv.
only once i knew mom was out-on-the-sunfish-with-nancy aunt alice was volleyballing my sister alice was on the roof sneakily burning her skin deep red johnny was at joey’s peter was with liz and amy next door andy was who knows and grandma
grandma was asleep--
only then would I go into the kitchen.
reaching a small hesitant hand
---drawing it back, a creak---
only felix, the cat. Or gus, the dog. Or christie, grandma’s dog whose hair would float
up into andy’s food, of course andy, the one who would be the most enraged
and the least graceful---
I snuck my hand toward the green breadbox
--the bottom drawer, not the top, the top is where grandma kept her wallet, but I wasn’t interested in that --- the bottom, for the chocolate. The chocolate.
I didn’t know who restocked the chocolate, nor did I care.
It only mattered-- were there hershey’s nuggets or just bars?
Nuggets tasted best
on a hot August afternoon, with a pop.
v.
It was respectable
to flop onto the porch bed after a grueling summer day’s activity
my legs buckling from the strain of the ski, swim, bike, volleyball, repeat, repeat, repeat
You were the coveted spot, the afternoon nap with the waves and breeze coming through
the screen. Years of my childhood spent tearing up the lawn dripping wet and yelping in
delight to fall
silent in line with the edge of the house, knowing the bed was there, and the bed was
occupied by a slumbering grandmother, a most fearful state, neither to be awoken nor
approached
How strange now---
to be allowed to walk in the front door sopping wet, but to continue instead
around the back,
carefully, quietly
peering in to see if you are still there.
vi.
alone again.
again alone.
my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother.
Can’t say we’ve had the best of luck, or have we.
We are masters of the practice of solitude. It’s become a peace and an honor,
to be alone with myself. Letting myself be still
with myself
it’s hard. I’m loud and impatient
demanding attention
declarations of valor and lofty promises
one day I shall sail to Nova Scotia
I don’t know what for or why, but I have promised myself, myself alone, this trip to Nova Scotia, and now I’ll have to do it. For myself, I suppose.
Laughing, with myself. Loving the small dot on my hand. Putting on thick knitted tights woolen socks the tight jean skirt lavender laced shirt glittery teeny pendant dangling golden earrings layering on the clothes like a religious ceremony, wrapping myself in clothing holding myself with self-knowing, resolution, peace, love, foresight. A dedication to beauty, to creating it all around me.
then I’m out--- wandering status engaged, all systems alert,
solvitur ambulando
***my first comment of feedback was "it doesn't feel finished! it feels still in motion". I guess, well the story is still in motion, isn't it?***
