A Perfect Irish Grave
From the upstairs closet of my memory,
I removed a mason jar full of my mom’s
button collection: blues, reds, clear
fasteners
from dresses, and some from Dad’s
peacoat.
I reflect on these things of little
consequence
and their pull on my history. After her
death,
I traveled to Michigan and visited the
home
of her childhood. Parking in front of
the path
leading to an abandoned farm, I balanced
with care the weight of sadness with
silence.
In the northern part of the yard, the
barn
shed its paint in red flakes. Its door
hung
lopsided and remained open to strays.
The corn crib slanted away from the silo
and towards the hen house. The years
unhooked the coop’s fencing from bent
nails,
and the chicken wire curled like a flag.
To the west is the house with bleached
wall
as cracked as the porch steps. Pausing
on the path to her childhood home,
I stooped and uncovered a portion of the
body
belonging to the broken statue of a blue
and white Madonna. Her veiled head poked
from under the root burl of a wayward
rose.
I knelt, and with my pocketknife, I
shaved
the knot away from her head and
shoulders.
Loosening the dirt beneath her ribs, I
dug
a tunnel to remove her from the earth
and found a glass button buried inside
her.
It reminded me of Mom’s collection and
her wish to have an Irish rose planted
beside
her headstone. Here, a Burgundy Rose
grew over
the burial site of the Virgin’s
statue, making it,
as my mother would say, a perfect Irish grave.
Leaving the Straights of Dover
The other thing
is that the enemy planes were diving down, machine-gunning the boats and
everything else. They bombed ships we were trying to get to. You might get
halfway and there’s no ship there, because it’s been destroyed. Comments after the battle of Dunkirk by private Rymer, Cheshire Regiment
Taking a sea cruise on The Norwegian Sun,
I watch the clouds cover the moon and turn
the North Sea into the color of ripe olives.
When the lights of Dunkirk become visible,
the dead from that battle reveal themselves
as foamy crests riding the waves.
Has too much time passed to think about
The Defenders? Does anyone remember
the ME 262s strafing the English boats
like a carpenter hammering coffin nails?
Without moonlight, distance is indiscernible,
and the dead rings the bell in the temple
of my ear while the wind blows white caps
away from the north shore of France.
1 AM 07/2023
A Chilly and Rainy Afternoon
On a chilly and rainy afternoon in late August,
the waves leave a sheen of gasoline,
leaked from outboard engines, all along
the back wall of the boathouse foundation.
Floating on their sides, three dead fish drift
inside the shed. One of their eye’s stares
at the beam of the roof and the other,
at the rock and seaweed bottom.
Creaking hoist ropes and anchor chains
add to the boredom of the cat. He watches
the fish, pushed by the waves, their heads
bumping the foundation’s wall.
About the boy sitting on an overturned
bucket, no problem. As he reads, he becomes
lost in the streets of Paris. Pausing he looks up
at the rain hitting the lake. Then, he turns
the page of his book, The Three Musketeers.
