November Swim at Barton Springs
(after Amy Lowell)
A pale salamander, blind among the bluestem,
limestone ledges, their trailing green beards,
the cold flow of water oddly hot on my skin.
This underwater garden keeps breathing.
Shafts of copper light channel something
as I swim, dreaming the dreams of silver tetras.
Arrowhead grasses sweep the current.
Tiny white blossoms drape, then sway.
You could call it beautiful but it isn’t really.
Only the little spotted face of the salamander,
who seems to stare at me but cannot see.
I swim slower and slower ravaged by grace.
Then you show up. It is the day after your birthday.
It is two weeks after your death. You are quiet.
It is as if we are both underwater and as beautiful
as these unnamed blossoms.
Oh mother, do you see me at all?
I have travelled so far from home
and something is either being erased or creates
the ways in which we’ve known each other.
* * * * * *
At Eleven
Even if I could see the cotton nightgown
I wore to breakfast then, even if I held
the smell of that water in my nose, that frosty
aluminum cup sweating wet on my fingers,
even if I had those very poached eggs, yolks
floating in bowls of butter, the way my mother
never ever made them. Even if I had those
blue plates. Even those plates vibrating
on the yellow kitchen table, the row
of glistening jars, cherries and pears
she’d canned while I slept. Even if I had
the bang of that screen door, the mess
of beets and carrots he flopped in the sink.
Even the mangle smell hot against sheets,
the crease pressed into his work pants,
the miniature dustpan and broom used
for table crumbs, the spoon collection,
ordered in its rack. I think I could not get back
how it felt. I think about the course of my soul
over time — didn’t I already know how mutable
it all is? Even then, during those long days
that should have been boring but were not,
I knew. My world would be more sweeping
than this, larger, louder, and less.
* * * * * *
“Time Changes Everything,”
Hardy writes, “except something within us which is always surprised by change.”
Thomas Hardy was born thought to be dead.
The birthday card: “I wish cake flew by instead of years!”
Sweet-winged and layered slice.
Deborah bragged it was her duty to die to make room for her descendants.
Hawthorne believed time flew over us but left its shadow behind.
Time begins with the crime and works backwards — a good murder mystery.
Who needs the clocks that used to look like me?
Those wrinkle-free faces, those moving hands.
What is more orderly than the moon?
Eventually, we all burn our white honeymoon pajamas.
I interrupt this poem to go pluck chin hairs.
Is geologic time the only thing that can save us?
Sick, she’s thinner every time the train whistle blows.
If I had known it was the last time I’d see my father would I have done anything differently?
Even vampires, those immortals untouched by time, have to be invited in.