BEDSIDE VIGIL

Because each night when I was pregnant
    my husband rubbed my aching feet
        and still does, when I’m grieving or in such pain
            the feet are the one place I can tolerate touch,

because my dad is slipping, lost, afraid,
    connected to a catheter, IV, heart monitor,
         blood pressure cuff, and leg pump
             that inflates and deflates automatically,

because he believes we’re in Siberia,
    because he keeps on yelling for my mum,
            because he cannot sleep,
                because I don’t know how to comfort him,

because we’ve never comforted each other,
    because my mother and his Irish mother
       are the only ones who’ve ever rubbed
          his skin, his limbs, to soothe and settle,

because I think maybe this most distant
    part of the body might be the least alarming,
       not so defended, clenched in fear,
            all I can think to do is rub his feet.

I should be less awkward, more at ease,
       more skilled. He says he’s never had
           his feet massaged before, in eighty years.
              They’re cold, dry, bony, gaunt as old war horses,

the toenails thickened, yellowed, ridged,
   the toes bent out of shape, the heels
       like hide, hard and insensible, ivory-colored,
             as I suddenly imagine he’ll be in his coffin.

I rub lotion on them, knead the instep,
   thumb the ball of the foot where all the muscles
     crunch, circle the vulnerable hollows
        round the ankle bone, squeeze and release

each foot from heel to toe, rotate and flex them.
     He lies there stiffly, silent.
        I ask him how it feels, and he says, carefully,
             “It feels nice.” He doesn’t sound too certain.

I can’t get his feet to soften, though, neither
      the muscles nor the skin. They remain
                 inflexible, obstinately unyielding.
​                        Only a little warmer, is all.

THE SILENCE OF THE WRENS

July 23: six weeks of high summer still to go. A heat dome has simmered us in 110 degrees. When it breaks like a fever, we throw the windows open for the first time in a month. But I sleep inexplicably poorly, restless all night, and finally give up trying at five. Something is wrong, but I can’t say what. Sitting by the open kitchen window with my tea, it comes to me. I can hear a squirrel quaaing, a white-breasted nuthatch yammering—and that’s all. What’s shifted is what’s missing: no wrensong. The house wren who arrived in April, whose descending liquid trills have flashed through my days like a bright needle from dawn to dark, is silent. His insistent fountain of song has woken me every day these last three months, the sound track of summer, its fulcrum. A tiny bird with a big voice, quick, sparky movements and imperious habits, he’s a tyrannical sentinel. His territorial call bubbles out of the air as he bossily patrols the fence, the compost bin, the sumac that’s taken over the back yard, the miniature plum tree, the overgrown mock orange, the arbor vitae, the neighbors’ redbud, the black walnut, the nodding plumes of the ostrich ferns. He’s a natty dresser, with his herringbone waistcoat and neatly barred tail cocked at a pert angle. He and his scolding mate are always busy with the important work of staking their claim and raising their brood. They were here for the Virginia bluebells, the lily-of-the-valley, the trillium, the magnolias, the dame’s rocket, the bleeding heart, the Korean Spice viburnum, the crab apples, the lilac, the irises, the peonies, the locusts, and the beebalm. But now that the leggy daylilies with their blaze orange stars and their avid yellow throats are tumbling everywhere in loose profusion, like late fireworks, now that the black-eyed Susans are starting to flower, our two wrens have gone south. They must have left after dusk last night. Gone, like the two big green ash trees that vanished from the other side of the street somewhere between 9 and 5 yesterday. Like a pulled molar, the tongue returns to the mental gap, exploring the space again and again, memorizing the exact shape of loss. The flatness of without, diminished and drearily quiet. The sunflowers and the sweetcorn and the musk melons are almost here. But I’m grieving the disappearance of our diminutive neighbors, surprised, again, at how much it affects me, even though I knew it was coming, as the wheel of the year spins inexorably on. I want to say my goodbyes, thank them, wish them well on their journey, now that it’s too late. It may seem like the height of summer, but our wrens are gone. The first of all the losses.

​IN THE DARK
 
After you turn out the light, we lie
silent, not touching, face up
on our side-by-side pillows like effigies
of gentry on their tombs, as if
waiting for the Second Coming,
as if our devotion and our faith
could save us. The weight
of what’s awry between us lies
on my chest like a cold, flat stone.
 
Facing our bed is a framed print by Klimt
which I bought because I craved
what Klimt depicts: the couple
standing clasped, enfolded, glinting
gold. The lavishness of that embrace,
its public privacy. His back is turned,
her upturned face half-hidden
by his arm. Her eyes are closed.
His coat of many colors covers her,
as if that’s all they’ll ever need.
 
I can’t see the painting, in the dark.
Tonight, in any case, it would mock
my good intentions. Marriage tonight
is anything but bliss. It’s wedlock’s
deadbolt clanging on my discontent.
Shackled to one another, to this ache,
maybe for life. In Spain, the word
for “handcuff” is the same as “wife.”
 
There’s another painting in our room,
a wedding-present from my parents:
Crib Goch, a knife-shaped mountain ridge
in Wales, one people die on.
A spine of rock so slim and treacherous
that many make the traverse
on their hands and feet.
 
My father loved it, and tried to take
my mother over once, in fog, rain, and gale.
It’s not for the faint of heart
or the vertiginous. My mother’s both.
She tells the story still: how halfway along
she was “cragfast,” too terrified to move.
IN THE DARK, continued
No stanza break
 
How furious she was with him–
oblivious and fearless, nimble-footed;
how the gap between the two of them
seemed unsurmountable, and how,
to inch back down to safety,
they had to take each other’s hand.

1. 
Into our bedroom’s dark funk, before dawn,
For the first time in months, drift fragments of song.
A robin—just back—on the garage roof
Threads this northern silence with notes.
Freezing drizzle, gray pall, the lawn piebald with snow–
But he’s giving thanks. His three limpid phrases
Of praise rise & fall, piercing my caul of sleep.
He’s the bridegroom of half-light, of dream.
Wished-for as clean water, the bright drops of his song
Stitch winter to spring. We’re no longer alone–
His voice marries us, and this is his psalm:
To live is to give voice. All days are one.
 
2.
This is the time of shape shifters. The skyline morphs
From peach to indigo. Raccoons materialize from drains.
Commuters climb into their carcoons, corpuscles in the city’s veins.
Houses exhale & stretch. Porch lights snap on.
The great blue heron flaps back to her roost. The barred owl
In the white pine blinks his yellow eyes, feels hunger stir.
A siren shrieks & from the shades, unseen coyotes keen:
A high, wild chorus to misfortune.
This is the time when, from the greenworld, deer appear,
As if formed out of smoke, in twos & threes,
To crop the grass with delicate precision. Shades of the ancestors
Drift closer, haunting the perimeters of home.
 
3.
There is so much to fear in the country of darkness.
You’ll think you’re sinking, you could founder in its waters,
That you’ll vanish like a bright coin tossed in a well,
That you’ll never swim back up or be recovered.
Know this: that one day you’ll be found
Up on the moors at midsummer, with curlews bubbling,
Cupped in rainwater in the hollow of an ancient stone.
A boy will find & burnish you & keep you in his pocket.
The moon’s bone ball swivels slowly in the socket of sky.
Night’s a corrective, a necessary physic.
Only at night can you glimpse the history of distant stars.
Only at night can you see how small, & how accompanied, you are.