Of a Mother's Day Brief and Fleeting

basement window

Of a Mother’s Day Brief and Fleeting                                      

…this

is the way an old man walks who still

stays vigorous and strong, firm, alert,

holding on through the years for you—

The kind of old man you could be,

                or could have been.

                                                                William Stafford

                                                                Crossing Our Campground

When  you take it with you into your old age…

When you cut and wrap and fold and tie

to take it with you into your old age…

the day takes on her own decay—and maybe

it decays the way resin decays:

the split in the skin of the old growth

is filled with the retirement of other

lives: seeds, tiny feathers, a slow

going ant or beetle…and it is the quiet rise

of this up to the lips of such ants, or random  

needles or leaves and the one something

that gets stuck in the thick stick of it

and gives up and succumbs.  And suddenly

is never a word that applies to you anymore

for the time it takes for the liquid

to close completely over you, to rest there

beside the unscarred skin, beside the injury:

to take the day that the day gives

and crystalize and in time the gem

is cut and gathered and held up to the sun

and your treasure is locked there

is paused is utterly resolved: see: when it happened

it was soft, it was almost potable—

you did put it to your lips when you could

when no one was looking (because wouldn’t they

accuse you of going crazy?) your mouth

was pink with the chap and chafe of your kissing

it, not unlike his face, but never again that, or

the one you see sometimes in the middle

of the day when some small trinket falls

to the floor in an unexplainable wind but the sound

of it is like a pop and you only have resolve

enough to stop, to put your hands

to your throat because you know a scream

is living there you know it always

will be and times the afternoon comes

to the edge of the shelf and teeters there

and teases you and makes you old

before you’re even able

to be young in your children or theirs.  It all

comes undone sometimes and when it does

you walk out with your back against the city

and lose your way and your footing

and fall alone and get up alone and go

home again alone to no one for the rest…

for the rest of your life the old growth

forest in you will be wounded this way

and you will walk into it and with

your small blade take the choicest pieces

of amber, you’ll cut them down

to the skin in that shier deft amputation

you've practiced and come away with the solid 

fault and buff the fog of it

away till it becomes you

'till you string it along with the rest

and some have the living in them

and some the dead, most of them

the dead, and every one piece, some
of him.