248 Family poems

I see my mother in her laugh my father in her stubbornness myself in her worry her mother in the way she holds her hands she is made of all of us and somehow entirely herself that's the whole thing that's the miracle part

Sunday morning and everyone is somewhere else now the house is quiet in a way it wasn't for twenty years i make one cup of coffee and drink it slow which is also something

making promises they can’t keep. For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull each invading burr and thistle from your skin, cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt, take from the ground the dark oily poison– all to restore you happy and proud, the whole of you transformed and bursting into tomorrow. But where do I cut first? Where should I begin to pull? Should it be the Russian thistle down the hill where backhoes have bitten? Or African senecio or tumbleweed bouncing above the wind? Or the middle finger of my right hand? Or my left eye or the other one? Or a slice from the small of my back, a slab of fat from my thigh? I am broken as much as any native ground, my roots tap a thousand migrations. My daughters were never born, I am as much the invader as the native, as much the last day of life as the first. I presumed you to be as bitter as me, to tremble and rage against alien weight. Who should blossom? Who should receive pollen? Who should be rooted, who pruned, who watered, who picked? Should I feed the white-faced cattle who wait for the death train to come or comb the wild seeds from their tails? Who should return across the sea or the Bering Strait or the world before this one or the Mother Ground? Who should go screaming to some other planet, burn up or melt in a distant sun? Who should be healed and who hurt? Who should dry under summer’s white sky, who should shrivel at the first sign of drought? Who should be remembered? Who should be the sterile chimera of earth and of another place, alien with a native face, native with an alien face?

I carried my fear of the world to my children, but they refused it. I carried my fear of the world on my chest, where I once carried my children, where some nights it slept as newborns sleep, where it purred but mostly growled, where it licked sweat from my clavicles. I carried my fear of the world and apprenticed myself to the fear. I carried my fear of the world and it became my teacher. I carried it, and it repaid me by teaching me how to carry it. I carried my fear of the world the way an animal carries a kill in its jaws but in reverse: I was the kill, the gift. Whose feet would I be left at? I carried my fear of the world as if it could protect me from the world. I carried my fear of the world and for my children modeled marveling at its beauty but keeping my hands still— keeping my eyes on its mouth, its teeth. I carried my fear of the world. I stroked it or I did not dare to stroke it. I carried my fear of the world and it became my teacher. It taught me how to keep quiet and still I carried my fear of the world and my love for the world. I carried my terrible awe. I carried my fear of the world without knowing how to set it down. I carried my fear of the world and let it nuzzle close to me, and when it nipped, when it bit down hard to taste me, part of me shined: I had been right. I carried my fear of the world and it taught me I had been right. I carried it and loved it for making me right. I carried my fear of the world and it taught me how to carry it. I carried my fear of the world to my children and laid it down at their feet, a kill, a gift. Or I was laid at their feet.

Well I recall my Father’s wife, The day he brought her home. His children looked for years of strife, And troubles sure to come— Ungraciously we welcomed her, A thing to scorn and blame; And swore we never would confer On her, a Mother’s name I see her yet—a girl in years, With eyes so blue and mild; She greeted us with smiles and tears, How sweetly too she smiled— She bent to kiss my sullen brow, With woman’s gentle grace; And laid her tiny hand of snow On my averted face— “Henry—is this your son? She said— “Dear boy—he now is mine— What not one kiss?—” I shook my head, “I am no son of thine!—” She sighed—and from her dimpled cheek The rosy colour fled; She turned away and did not speak, My thoughts were with the dead— There leaped from out my Father’s eyes A jet of swarthy fire; That flashed on me in fierce surprise— I fled before his ire I heard her gentle voice entreat— “Forgiveness for her sake”— Which added swiftness to my feet, A sad and strange mistake— A year had scarcely rolled away When by that hated bride; I loved to linger half the day, In very joy and pride; Her voice was music to mine ear, So soft its accent fell; “Dear Mother now”—and oh, how dear No words of mine can tell— She was so gentle, fair and kind, So pure in soul and free from art; That woman with her noble mind, Subdued my rebel heart— I just had learned to know her worth, My Father’s second choice to bless; When God removed her from the earth, And plunged us all in deep distress— Hot fever smote with burning blight Stretchd on a restless bed of pain; I moaning lay from morn till night With aching limbs and throbbing brain— Four weary weeks beside my bed, She sat within a darkened room; Untiring held my aching head, Nor heeded silence—cold and gloom— And when my courage quite gave way, And fainter grew my struggling breath; She taught my stricken soul to pray And calmly meet approaching death— “Fear not God’s angel, sent by Him, The weary spirit to release; Before the mortal eyes grow dim, Floats down the white winged dove of peace”— There came a change—but fingers small, No longer smoothed my matted hair; She sprang not to my feeble call, Nor helped to lift me to my chair— And I arose as from the dead, A life for her dear life was given; The angel who had watched my bed Had vanished into Heaven!—

My Uncle Fletcher, Our county seer, Bestowed his gifts On my no-good cousin Jeff, Who had a feeling About nearly everything. "That guy of hers . . ." "Those fucking queers . . ." He'd say, giving me the eye, Which was the same eye That could gaze upon A yellow froth of newborns, And know the cockerels From the pullets.

Incomprehensible fate that sentenced my father to my mother. I can’t blame him, I would have left the raving bitch myself, and would do so many many times in years to come. Then, of course, I came along. There is a limit to what one man can endure. So I suppose I am the reason he left, actually. I am the one to blame. And yet he did his best; he did all that he was capable of doing, and wrote me every year, like clockwork. He rarely remembered to mail what he wrote me, poor man (when I think of what I must have put him through), barely legible one-sentence postcards he sometimes worked at half the night; but as they all said the same thing, word for word, it wasn’t that bad. He could be forgiven.The blizzard I visit your city disguised as will never be over and never arrive. I think what he was trying to say was that at some point I’d begin to notice I was freezing, wasn’t dressed right, had nowhere to go, and was staggering into a blinding snow that no one else could see. I think he meant, the cold will make you what I am today.

My sister in her well-tailored silk blouse hands me the photo of my father in naval uniform and white hat. I say, “Oh, this is the one which Mama used to have on her dresser.” My sister controls her face and furtively looks at my mother, a sad rag bag of a woman, lumpy and sagging everywhere, like a mattress at the Salvation Army, though with no holes or tears, and says, “No.” I look again, and see that my father is wearing a wedding ring, which he never did when he lived with my mother. And that there is a legend on it, “To my dearest wife, Love Chief” And I realize the photo must have belonged to his second wife, whom he left our mother to marry. My mother says, with her face as still as the whole unpopulated part of the state of North Dakota, “May I see it too?” She looks at it. I look at my tailored sister and my own blue-jeaned self. Have we wanted to hurt our mother, sharing these pictures on this, one of the few days I ever visit or spend with family? For her face is curiously haunted, not now with her usual viperish bitterness, but with something so deep it could not be spoken. I turn away and say I must go on, as I have a dinner engagement with friends. But I drive all the way to Pasadena from Whittier, thinking of my mother’s face; how I could never love her; how my father could not love her either. Yet knowing I have inherited the rag-bag body, stony face with bulldog jaws. I drive, thinking of that face. Jeffers’ California Medea who inspired me to poetry. I killed my children, but there as I am changing lanes on the freeway, necessarily glancing in the rearview mirror, I see the face, not even a ghost, but always with me, like a photo in a beloved’s wallet. How I hate my destiny.

He was calling in the bulls from the street. They came like a dark river — a blur of chest and hoof — everything moving, under, splinter — hooked their horns through the walls. Light hummed the holes like yellow jackets. My mouth was a nest torn empty. Then, he was at the table. Then, in the pig’s jaws — he was not hungry. He was stop. He was bad apple. He was choking. So I punched my fists against his stomach. Mars flew out and broke open or bloomed — how many small red eyes shut in that husk? He said,Look. Look. And they did. He said,Lift up your shirt. And I did. He slid his fork beneath my ribs — Yes, he sang.A Jesus side wound. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. He reached inside and turned on the lamp — I never knew I was also a lamp — until the light fell out of me, dripped down my thigh, flew up in me, caught in my throat like a canary. Canaries really means dogs, he said. He put on his shoes. You started this with your mouth, he pointed. Where are you going? I asked. To ride the Ferris wheel, he answered, and climbed inside me like a window.

After Herman Melville Glad, on time pennies click hard at your teeth everyone is throwing them Gathered about you in a circle on the deck everyone is catching them a blue flame about their heads cocked back over the railing Glass you think in the middle and wheat stands from which time is made on the upper decks’ passing of the banks That’s not the brittle moment above you On shore, leaves turn their gray sunless sides every which way The riverboat is very small it will never get here