Photos on the fridge

It begins with photographs
removed in categories
from a refrigerator door.
First, one placed at eye level
of you smiling, relaxed,
tilting your head toward mine,
happy to be where you were.

Others follow-- snapshots of the two of us
taken by one of us with arm outstretched.
Laughing, wondering if heads would be cut
from camera's frame or if point of angle
would include us both. We marveled, later,
at how great we looked together.

A few remain-- innocuous ones,
simply good of you or me,
calling up times of joy, now heartache.
Removing them all is too final a step--
too hard to admit-- too laden with grief.

That will come later--
in a few days, a few weeks,
when the heart is steeled
and resignation is forefront--
when the mere sight of you
stops the healing process.

For now, it still helps
to place a finger on your sweet smile
as I sip my morning orange juice.

Certainty

Sunday morning, 7:00 AM
I slip beneath the covers of your bed, press
my body into the shape of your own,
borrow heat, listen to your measured breathing
and wait on the edge of confidence.
Caught in the sharpness of need, of desire,
uncertain if this dance is lust's masquerade
or love's reflection.

Some things are certain.
Ice thaws in heat.
Bulbs awaken in softened soil.
Moonrise follows sunset.
Midwinter branches leaf green
and verdant in Spring.
But between us, much is in doubt,
our future held hostage by seasons past
and a need to harness seasons future.

So we press the current living--
this here-and-now space--
into the box of certainty,
clamp its lid
and step forward
without change.

Locked in

This year, mid-February is a locked-in month--
snow bound under crust, weighted down by
rock-hard chunks of ice. None of this softens
in the heat of the rising sun that climbs earlier
and stays longer in the February sky.
The sun that strokes this alien landscape,
wraps icy fingers around its substance.
Forbids thawing, suspends stirrings of spring forms.
Holds everything in stillness, without motion.

The wind returns each day, works in union
with the winter sun, licks simple thaw
before it can leak into the sky.
It rises under the floorboards of my den,
falls from the attic through my upstairs ceiling,
slips around window panes, casts a cold frame
on this space I call home.

There is so much inertia when faced with
a force like this. So much effort is needed
to change its direction. The present course,
no matter how bitter, seems preferable
to facing blinding sunshine, harsh winter wind.

Perhaps the fear of what lies beyond
a challenge to the elements keeps me
stolidly inside, warm by the wood stove.
Perhaps the uncertainty of what will replace
this winter landscape makes me hold it dear.
Perhaps I simply cannot imagine a time without
everything that is now the essence of everyday.

So, instead of meeting this winter head on,
instead of challenging it with scarf and hat,
instead of slogging through its ice and crusty snow,
I sit in the comfort of the warm woodstove,
seeking comfort in the certainty of spring's return.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday afternoon, stolen moments--
sun slanting across single pillow
two heads resting peacefully,
two bodies warming blankets
bristling with anticipation.

Lovers pause, ready to slake thirst.
Single stroke of flesh produces heat.
Touch of hand ignites union's memory.
Lips bruise, limbs entwine, all is motion,
friction, desire masquerading as love,
even as Rilke's infinite distance
stretches endlessly.

Movement toward that wonderful
side-by-side living.
Wary dance around other
whole against wide sky.

Sun lightens afternoon ceiling.
Outside, only cold and ice--
Inside, the promise of desire's fire...

Irrevocable words

This morning, a nor'easter slipped up the coast of Maine,
piled relentless, blowing snow, as if to
tease the hard working shoveler, as if to
toy with those who'd have order restored, as if to
dump something accumulative into our laps,
something unexpected, hard to fathom, just here,
leaving us with no recourse other than
to accept the very fact of it.

Words sometimes arrive like nor'easters.
Out of nowhere they fall and begin
to pile up--leaving mounds of questions,
self doubt, worry. As destructively
as an avalanche, they grow in volume until
the weight of even a single word
has the potential to crush things--
sweet confidence, sheer faith,
blind hope, solid trust,
true belief that as things stand,
so they are.

The Tides of Mothering

For my mother, Valentine's Day, 2007

First memory--

Aroostook morning potato field
frost-bound rows, sun over forest horizon
and you, a young mother, not quite 30,
kneeling to shake soil from harvest roots
filling ash basket, dumping Katahdins
into tongue-and-groove cedar barrels
strung out row after row across this field
in this county vista in Houlton, Maine--
September, 1958.

At your side, a six-year-old daughter
not wanting this cold morning field,
toes and fingers cramping,
tired of mother's expectations
and beginning to cry.
With her, you return to your apartment,
shake the field dirt from her high-top sneakers
and prop her feet near the warming heat
of the oven of your ceramic stove.

Next memory--

Cobalt-blue beds filling each corner
of a bedroom meant for two.
Four headboards with nursery-rhyme decals
pressed onto pine by a mother’s soft hand.
Tucked beneath the cow jumping over the moon,
that same daughter, one year later,
peeks through half-closed eyes one night
to watch you tiptoe in and leave a nickel
beneath her sister's pillow.
Secret thrill of knowledge,
loss of innocence.

Memories frame you in action,
never in repose, your life void of ease,
filling with a mother's burden and silent joy--
25 years old and four young daughters,
28 years old and, at last, a son,
32 years old and your sixth and final child.

Tucked into the pages of a leather-bound scrapbook,
a Kodak snapshot--circa 1949--trumpets your bloom time.
You, beautiful in cotton shorts, crisp blouse,
long lean legs, trim waist, hair crimped
in soft auburn waves that frame your hopeful face.
You squint into the sun, shade your first-born's face,
while your young husband, looking every inch
like James Dean, stands at your side,
taut cotton t-shirt, strong legs in denim,
one arm cupped around your shoulder,
the other astride a hip jauntily thrust forward.

Fifty-eight years stretch before the two of you--
brimming with the challenge of making do,
of holding home together, of giving up brilliant youth,
and, for you, of taking on a mother's mantle.
So much promise--so much left behind.

What were you thinking that summer morning
as your gaze met the camera's eye?
Could you imagine the journey yet to come?
Could you see, then, your 55-year-old daughter
with three children of her own--
exactly half the number of the crop you bore?
Could you picture yourself arriving full circle,
having weathered the tides of mothering so well?

Fire, Snow, Ice

Red hot woodstove embers sizzle and snap, bear up
through smoldering green wood that refuses
to be consumed for someone else's heat.

Snow falls through the night, and I awake to white
inching higher on roof top, car top, stair treads, railings.
On lilac and the shriveled orange berries of mountain ash.
It silences the rustle of hydrangeas, fills knotweed stumps--
a specter of winter's beauty that compresses.

Fall's torrent of rain lies frozen now,
suspended from culvert's mouth.
At 18 degrees, it simply lets season
dictate motion. Inside,
you sit by my woodstove,
immobilized by my three words--

I love you.

Unwilling to put a name to your own emotions,
it pains you to hear the label I bring to mine.
Your worry forms embers of vague concern,
something unnamed, as if to voice it
is to wrap it too tightly around the solitary
space you've carved out of all these years.

Like winter's water, you're bound in place,
unable to match the heat of my emotions.
You eye me carefully, tender sweet kisses,
and wonder if there is room in your life
for my expectations. Meanwhile, the space
between us grows slimmer, and you rub
your thumb over the idea of just sipping
the nectar of this thing I call "love," which--
like wood to embers,
like snow amassing,
like water freezing--
builds slowly,
rises too high,
takes prisoners.

What then?

Simply take the words
to your heart, add them
to the wood pile,
the snow mound,
the ice-bound stream
and wait to see
what spring's release brings.