Taking, Care
I was in the squares of Savannah,
moon eyed and just-wed, honey-sunned, while
relatives plucked my grandmother’s best
things and flowers. After the funeral, before
the big auction, familial teeth and their twice
removed seething emerged in Ohio, gnawing
the valuables faster than her cancer; beautiful
objects and meaning sinking into the stomachs
of their hungriest pockets. I returned on Thursday
from the squares of Savannah, still shaded by
October’s magnolia and southern live oak
memories. I was a new wife missing the closest
still-married family member. There was ease in
our many midwestern days. I had to pick from an
upheaval of leftovers, her once-loved
possessions. I took the angel, the quilt. I grabbed
LIFE magazines, writing paper, and slim books
I’d never see her read. I missed the chance to
rescue her heavy, most grandfatherly clock that
clicked our time together while the pendulum
hypnotized like rhythm of rain or rocking chair on
our quiet after-church afternoons. I hear it
even decades later in my umpteenth wave of
second-hand grief. When I was in Savannah
I absorbed each museum, riverwalk, and ghost. I
was voracious: sneaking sand into my back pocket
from Tybee Island; handfuls of Spanish moss
slipped into my purse at the green and gray
Bonaventure Cemetery.
Sip-soaked
Too much headwine
and now our glarey stares:
every clever rereverie
sweat-glassed and fog-wet.
Whose move now? Memory
has strayed like a loose hen.
Let’s go to bedlam. I love
hate you in the way that you
are in the way.
Wake up to rooster-sad
crowcrying.
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