November Separation: 2000
Because I wanted to write this valentine
And my words were composed on cheap yellow draft,
Since there was little more than electricity,
Paper, pencils, not a sign of new books,
I wanted you to possess these poems, a boxful,
Yes, these poems in the kindergarten tongue of dead snakes.
Here they are, curled and waiting:
An extra set of teeth, a chain drawn
Across the mind before sleep
On the night of Schubert’s birthday.
As one century slips away, it is good only
To remember those sad months, the far distant
Country, the empty elevator one forgot
To slam shut, the gold hoop earrings
From the homeland.
We brought those gifts, for every man and woman,
Our arms were filled with them.
And they cast them down like children.
They cast our presents aside, asking only
That their boxes be filled again.
In November, you were gone, sweet Daedalus.
You took off for another dominion of clouds.
***
Scenes from Childhood: Cleveland, 1958
Morning glory. White trumpets on slender vines herald each city dawn.
Wet dresses stretched on backyard lines flap with the sound of starlings’ wings.
The backyard overgrown with red and pink roses behind our large, stately house.
We awoke to the smell of Grandma’s homemade buttermilk biscuits and warm syrup.
On the long way over to school, carried aloft in Daddy’s strong arms,
In the wind. The wind blessed brown faces for miles.
I learned to smear with paint my fingers on clean white paper,
To create my first, simple works of art.
And in the dancing wind. The wind in my hair, as I waited alone,
Weeping in the empty schoolyard, crying for Daddy to walk me home,
Crying at the thought of wandering alone those menacing streets.
Then he comes for me, regal and tall, to lift me up again in his embrace.
The wind. The wind sings with my breath, my life.
Father and daughter. Together we are one:
We are on the way home.
***
Conversation with My Son
You tell me the Age of Fear begins that magic year – 1978:
same year your daddy parades around Greenwich Village
singing and dancing to his own dark musical poems.
Your daughter is four. Sees in you that same dark magic.
There is a certain stillness about you tonight. A tough calm.
I hear your voice hovering over the distance between us.
Now the distance is my age measured by all these humble years,
the time of certain decline, cataracts like pearls in my eyes, slow limp of gait.
Your daughter has learned to count numbers,
to spell with her private alphabet.
Numbers no longer matter to me now,
as if age is just another word for tired, so tired.
You forgave the years of pain: trauma, love and lies.
Did your daddy ever really love me?
Did he ever really love himself?
And you, my son, at age forty-seven, steps forward
accepting all the worship due a grown man with your kind of wisdom.
You say it is the Fear, brought on by time,
ravaging all within us like a heartache.
***
Blue: A Sonnet
He asks for a song, so I sing one just for him.
I sing of these unholy gifts stolen from within
the refuge of music. A pale moon loiters
under a geometry of stars. They know about us:
Together joined under the white moon’s angle of light.
Gossip spreads like shards of broken glass at our feet.
We stroll along the harbor of another night without sleep,
a festival of dreams awaiting us on the other side.
My song seems to be filled with other poets’ songs more generous.
They know about us: the way a simple riff rules our evening moods,
or the tattered silences between us. Each night
a quiet desperation. The stars measure the breadth of my love.
I cannot be for him whom I never have been.
I will wait for him…
***
Poems (c) Beth Brown Preston
Image: Joao Vitor Marcilio Unsplash retouched