Poems in black and white
are too plain and simple.
They try to tell us
that the sky is blue.
But what matters most
about the sky,
is that Amelia Earhart
got lost there.
On a clear night
flying among the stars,
a woman without a suitcase.
The way my father eats an apple
inspires. Right down to the seeds
he bites, a decisive reflective crunch,
turning the stem not to miss
the littlest bit.
We are sitting on the porch
of my new house. As he eats
he admires the shade trees,
touch-the-sky oaks, mimosa, and beech
whose roots search out water beyond the edge of its shade.
“Now that was a good apple.” He leans back.
I describe how he polished the fruit off,
how it looks to me, and he nods.
“Sweetest by the seeds. You could plant these,”
and he holds out the core.
“Nothing prettier
than apples in bloom. Except maybe maples in fall.”
He considers beauty, her varieties and form.
He waves to John Curley. Yes, dear heart,
here it is, handed to me once more. Savor savor
plant the seeds.
Newly wed and new to the kitchen, I made potatoes
every night—mashed, boiled, skin on or off,
fried or roasted. No potato rotted in my cupboard.
I scrubbed wherever dirt might lurk. I’d learned
how potato clumps in their lazy beds blackened:
starving a million, sending the lucky to famine ships,
hatches battened between decks of the dying.
My husband loved to mock the Irish of me—
the seven course dinner of six pack and a potato.
He’d pretend to pommes de terre dauphine, but lived
for instant, quick-cooked flakes. He tried out new beds
and pronounced mine cold. I burned rice,
made glutinous noodles. In the bad years
landlords exported food while tenants starved;
the righteous blamed the starving for the blight. Some say
we’re a feckless race. Some confuse person with potato.
The sketches, which I said I liked best,
had the “mark of the hand.” A mistake,
my sculptor friend said,
referring to the artist’s unsteady line.
He must have grabbed a paper scrap and a pickled brush,
tapped the cap of India ink
and poured the stuff in a cat food can.
Then the stroke — its wobbled edge —
and in my view, perfect. “The mark of the hand,”
which Linda says has the heart flowing through.
And this makes me think of a line from Michaux:
“. . . interior gestures, the ones with which
we don’t have limbs but the desire for limbs.”
