Dressing

I put on my mother’s undershirt, my mother’s socks, her splash pants, the gloves I found at the very back of her closet underneath the misshapen afghan she knitted 40 years ago, my father’s fleece sweater—the one I bought for him some time before he died—and my father’s Tilley hat (given to me by my brother after my mother’s funeral.) Thus clothed, I find I am ready for any kind of spring weather. The cold rain cannot penetrate to my raw skin.

Ice Arrows

I look for an explanation across the expanse of water. Arrows of ice point me in all directions. They are too thin to hold my weight. The dog and I keep walking on solid ground.

Ice Tide

The ice travels in and out on the tide like so much flotsom: the great white shards, the frozen rubble, the floating sand-iced cakes, the pale blue shadows, the cold hanging in the air like winter breath. Yesterday when I came I saw nothing but an open expanse of steel-blue water with a thin white line on the distant horizon.

Birds

Yesterday it was a flock of robins―a good dozen or so―dancing in my neighbour’s pasture, where his cousin keeps his beef in summer, beside the broken feeder. Back so soon and fat from Patriot Point or Hamilton Park or White Point Garden, low country, South Carolina, where bald cypress and live oak are thickly hung with Spanish Moss. Today it was a nuthatch upside-down on the 100-year-old lilac, back from Muncy, Pennsylvania, and a downy woodpecker returned from the mountains of Virginia, tap-tap-tapping among the barren plums. Feathers, flying, and these tiny warm and beating hearts are surely miracles.

Hands

These hands: warm and almost unbearably soft, still reaching to try to grasp and hold delicate memories as they slip under flannel blankets, hide in the fold of hospital gown, evaporate into flowers. Now those memories are floating like whispers in the trees, uncontained by skin and bone, oh, free, like love.

Spring in Winter

In a matter of hours, we have once again gone from squeak (of snow) to squelch (of mud). Winter ebbs and flows like a tide, though much less predictable. Winter swings like a pendulum, though more erratically. Winter breathes a bitter wind and a balmy breeze. Winter freezes and melts, freezes… and melts: The woodshed door is iced shut and the mosquitoes hatch in the warm cellar; The road is a polished rink and a deeply rutted muddy line; The clouds sing snow and cry rain. Beside the fire we shake our heads in worry and in the sunroom we bask with the cat.

Reading

I did not know I would put my reading glasses on before the sun came up, or that I would take them off, finally, long after I wanted to be asleep. I didn’t know my very eyes would ache from everything they were being reminded of and seeing anew or discovering for the first time. I didn’t know I would read through the end of summer — even through the sun this year went on and on, like a second summer, like a fierce longing to be in the woods and on the water, like a permanent postcard, like a wrapped gift that couldn’t be opened. I didn’t know I would read through family dinners, birthday parties, grandchildren learning to walk, friends visiting, parents sinking slowly into oblivion. I didn’t know the leaves would change colour on the trees and let go into the wind as it passed, jumping exuberantly, reluctantly, fearfully into another life, as if they too are exhausted by words.

Limestone City

Today I stood on the library steps under a cloudless blue sky. I looked down towards the lake, just visible, like a bright beacon of blue, past the brick and concrete buildings and the green dome of St. Georges. It’s the tail end of summer, but all I could see was a swirl of stinging snowflakes, and Frederick, his heart thudding like a missed train. There he stands, his overdue books tumbled on the steps, their covers obscured by snow. There he stands, his left shoulder registering his recent collision with the librarian. Like a memory, I can see it and feel it, and I reach to pull my fictional scarf up around my sun-blessed face.

Twin Worlds

It is a strange thing to have two lives. In one life I live in a garret, and creep around other people’s routines, wincing when the bedroom door sticks in the heat or I drop the soap in the shower. In one I read by lamplight in an overstuffed chair, and when I look up at the clock I find it is uncommonly late; after I dream there is no one there to tell it to; when I read again in the early morning hours it is almost like I am still dreaming.

In another life I do everything to make this garret possible. In both lives there is always the pull towards the overstuffed chair and the looking around for my love to tell my dreams to. Twin worlds, twin longings.

“The Ghetto”

After only two nights in Limestone City I can see what Frederick Madrigal neglected to tell us. Whole streets, whole blocks, whole neighbourhoods are filled with student housing. He didn’t ever remark on the number of nineteen-year-olds lounging on porch roofs. He overlooked the awe-inspiring debris of trashed furniture on sidewalks and in driveways: broken pressboard shelving, soggy sofas, tilted lamp stands. He did not once count the number of empty pizza boxes overflowing their recycling containers. He steadfastly turned his gaze away from such vast quantities of beer bottles, cans, and kegs—more on view in 24 hours than I have seen, I think, in my entire life.