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SIMPLE THINGS
It was our ritual,
coffee and pound cake on the porch
in the late afternoon.
Thin and frail, you held the cup
in trembling hands,
saying, "Coffee never tastes so good
as when I have it here with you."
The days leading here needed no retelling.
We reveled instead in the peaceful porch,
the taste of coffee and cream.
Potted plants covered the rails with ferns,
widow's tongue and wild asparagus;
morning glories grew on strings.
Inside, beyond the dark screens,
the house held the heat,
smelled of camphor and mildew,
Estee Lauder and sickroom.
Linoleum buckled, plaster cracked,
and the closets were dark pits.
But in the yard cannas and peonies spread,
and sprawling maples offered shade.
The click of our spoons, the rattling cups,
were lost in the locust's rising whines,
the insect sounds of a dying summer.
Heads bent, we sipped, broke cake,
spoke softly or not at all.
I have a porch now, Grandmother,
not unlike yours,
where jasmine and trumpet vines
attract hummingbirds.
You would have liked it.
Sometimes I have coffee there,
and I never feel alone.
I hold you warm
like the cup in my hand.
GRIEFS I NEVER KNEW
Once in late August
in Vermont,
I came upon a country graveyard,
wandered there
reading names and dates,
until suddenly
I stood among Union graves
where blood-red leaves
lay splattered on mossy stones
dark with mold and many frosts.
Beneath the maples
the wet grass waved
in a cool sweet wind.
My mind spun South,
beyond mountain ridges,
beyond fences and battlefields,
to other graves,
Confederate ones,
in wire grass
and broiling sun
where stones stood upright
or leaned in a tumult of blackberry vines,
where thunderheads massed like battalions,
and jays clamored
from distant pines shadowing
the names of our honored dead.
But these were the victors,
young men who wore the blue
dark as the Vermont sky alive with stars,
their lives as brief as their bright smiles
that won the hearts of girls they kissed,
that tore the hearts from their mothers,
who hugged them and had to let them go.
I read their names, felt griefs I never knew,
and watched a leaf slowly rocking down,
red as this blood-soaked land.
It was formed like a child's small hand
curled palm-up in sleep.
TONGUES OF FLAMES
Spring rain and darkness
impel me to light a candle
and listen to Callas.
The flame's dusty halo
and a rising melody blend their gold.
And then out there, glad for rain,
a mockingbird gone insane
and perched somewhere under the eaves
trills every song he knows,
telling secrets of green twigs stirring,
while death, hidden in shadows,
folds its wings.
Notes cascade; notes rise,
in tongues untranslatable:
glossolalia of bird, soprano, rain,
and the candle's small lilting sun.