I swear

When I tired of
truncating loss in
my second tongue,

which requires
a discipline leached
from emptying places by

the very thing of
which I wished
to speak, I reverted

to prose, to its spacious lexicon, the capacious luxury of too many words — sometimes, not quite right; sometimes, marshaled in the wrong order, unruly children who will not hew the line.  Because they are playing.  Because my life among the gone and going — my dead father, my deteriorating mother, the old hens whose occasional labored breath measures their mortality, the geriatric cat whose spine daily grows more prominent — is not my only life.

She brought me a mouse again today, declaring her allegiance to the experience she still fully inhabits.  The old hens — still beautiful — gape and tilt, then peck and scratch, eat and drink, dustbathe.  Happy, still.  My mother tells me again she is worn out; the present malaise is her last. One day she will be right. Not today.

I inhabit an aging body, a ship traversing uncertain waters;  a worn keel, a wobbly rudder.  I navigate by flickering stars on a chart I have half-forgotten.  All around me, older vessels, less seaworthy —  ghost ships becoming — entrusted to my care.  Some day not distant, waves whose authority I later recognize will capsize each in turn.

If one sea submerges, or we sail off its edge, are we christened in another? Must we concede the final beauty of bones?

I swear I will not look away. I swear.  This is my fleet;  I will keep one eye on each slow disappearance,  the other fixed on the beacon that illuminates the far shore from which we were launched, to which we return. I will not look away. I swear.

For now, the mysterious moon before dawn, each day’s sun blushing the dark horizon. For now, the increase in bird song.  For now, the trembling and dazed mouse — this one luckier than others — I carry to safety, praising my old cat for trying to feed me. For now, my young hen – brilliant white, with comical cheek muffs — who asks to be held and stroked, told she is marvelous.  I do. She is. I might have

written a poem
that says: I despair,
I rejoice; I sail

alone, I sail near
you on this roiling
sea. We shudder;

we steady. I might
have chosen the
few perfect words

impeccably configured
to say: daily,
we are lost,

and daily, found,
to say: we are
all ghost ships

becoming, yet holding
course for now,
holding and tasting

the salt air, feeling
the thrill and buck and calm,
this passage, our lives, and

even the flickering stars
are light enough. Even
the flickering stars

are light enough. I
swear I will not
look away. I swear.

 

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