Mother and Daughter

Mother and Daughter

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it…

                                                W. S. Merwin

                                                Dew Light

Days when your dying strikes me

as the oldest thing that has ever happened, or that

after all these years it is as if it has

never happened at all, that I never

watched it all my whole life, the aluminum can 

of it, the steep steep stairs of it, the height of the low shed's

hayloft of it and the trapdoor in the middle

of the floor of it where I only ever saw, come

November, a buck or a doe or the old

cow split wide as that Bible story about Samson

and the lion’s jaw all hot then all cooled by the time

it’s dragged out into.  

And the woods of it, and strapped to the sedan of it, windows

rolled down as much for the rope holding it all on

as for the Pall Mall smoke of it, the only way,

city girl you were, you could see walking

through the world of it, with blood and flesh as red as that,

to dull it to the color of it.

Days when a window conch in the curiosity shop

you’d seen once and wonder how they coaxed the animal

out of it all together and once and for all forever because days

you'd say you would want to live in such a deep

curved peace hard as teeth the whole way

around and only feel and grope in the most

unassuming thrill, you’d hoped to live like that

one day if you let yourself feel anything at all.  You’d said

you can learn the most remarkable things

from the dead:

the fragrance of daisies after dark after walking out

on him

the flavor of sea salt water after walking in

with him

the feeling oh Jesus the feeling of descending stairs after you pushed yourself

away from him

and it’s the fog of it and it’s blood of it that came

afterwards and the texture of the cloth you washed your crotch with

was like that doe’s hide the first time you’d touched

something as dead as her, something awful dead,

the red the white the honey brown

you’d later hang your own self from,

allegorically of course, in your head and on your tongue

in your longing in your stories and you’d tell me

every day every day you were alive or barely

a fight with nothing at all but everything, everything after all.