Insomnia

The worst time is 3:45 a.m. hope is gone. 

It is the most melancholy feeling. 

The room fallow in that shade of night. 

Dreary, desolate, even the breeze 

from the open window is misery. 

My eyes burn as if peppered. 

I repeat dumb things to myself, 

not complete thoughts, just vague bursts. 

I think about the word, Burgundy. 

My mother wore a burgundy dress 

to a wedding. 
Did we bury her in it?

I roll from my stomach to my side again. 

I try again to count to 500. At 76,

my mother's burgundy drapes float up
then vanish. 

No one on earth understands why
creatures sleep, 

why they must sleep to stay sane. 

If only I could see the stars! 

Is that a piano I hear? 
It's my old love. 

I lay still, listen. 

He looks stern, almost angry when he plays. 

I remember the burgundy gown 

my mother gave me, how it annoyed me.

She gave me something so formal!

Me, who hasn't worn a gown since my prom, 

and that was knee length, a ruffled taffeta 
dress, fuchsia, which is almost burgundy. 
I guess the love of burgundy runs in the family.  
Come to think of it, 

my mother dressed her porcelan dolls in burgundy. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I am dreaming? 

If I am actually asleep?  

Bad Habit

I must stop watching 48 Hour ID.

A thrilling distraction but all those murders

make me wonder: will my husband club me

in my sleep? Will my son arrange

a drive-by? My daughters?

They want new cars, new stuff.

So they all have motives.

The scary part: it's often those you least expect.

Possibly my niece. A lawyer with a social conscience.

Who would think she'd kill her aunt?

She's the person I least expect.

Hard to know when a good person turns killer.

Greed, vengeance, jealousy degrade our souls.

And yet we are not all killers.

I couldn't kill anyone.

I have wished people dead:

the leader of North Korea,

child abusers.  But I couldn't kill them.

The very thought of murder freaks me out.

I don't believe in ghosts but I imagine

the murdered haunting the earth.

Just to witness life fading from a body naturally

makes for a frightening spectacle.

I sat with horror next to her bed

when my mother in law took her last breath

in the nursing home. Her boney chest rose and fell

all morning and suddenly it did not rise.

I stared at the spot, waiting for her breast to move again,

slowly realizing it would never, never move,

all her being was gone, and then my own breath

refused to rise from my own chest as I grasped

the meaning of never.

And oh how my mind slipped from my body,

like a sword from a sheath, the evening I walked

into that hospital room where my own dead mother lay.

What fear seized my body, paralyzed it.

I had to feel around for the chair like a blind person.

That's how frail I was in the presence of death, turned

into a pile of salt like that woman in the Bible.

Yes I must stop watching 48 Hour ID.

It's a very bad habit. It keeps my mind

on the dreadful question:

Who wants me dead?

My dread was gone

The hole in the tree grew bigger with each cut. The tree stood in our neighbor's front hard. I cut into it aimlessly, out of boredom, pealed back the bark and dug deeper with my newly found Swiss Army knife. What else can a 10 year old do on a warm Sunday afternoon with a Swiss army knife but cut a hole into the membrane of a tree? Each slicing of tissue released a bit of brown ooze. My hands became sticky with sap. Suddenly the wound looked big, really big, as big as a dinner plate. The sight of that enormous injury woke me from my trance. I heard my little sister's voice, What if they see you?  The tree now looked deformed. And my God, I was the deformer. If they found out, the neighbors who lived there would tell my parents. My mother would fly into a hair-pulling rage. We ran. The injured tree grew under my eyelids that night until sleep finally took me. The next day, walking home from school, there stood the tree, its trunk bandaged like a wounded soldier. I tried not to look but I felt its dim awareness of me, heard it heave and sigh as I passed, felt sorrowful eyes on my back. Every day, my pace quickened as I approached the tree. I had asked my sister to keep silent. She was kind, understood the dire consequences for me. From time to time, her silence required a small favor, but I felt grateful. As the weeks passed, the tree became the only thing I knew on that street. The houses and lawns, the fences, everything disappeared behind that deformed, now hallowed, tree. From the church, I brought Holy Water and poured it next to the trunk. I focused my gaze on the wound, prayed that God would hurl His healing power up through the roots, into my presence. Then, under the ground, under my feet, the roots squirmed and swallowed. That is what I felt and my dread was gone.  

Ice

Long after nightfall, my father parks 

the Ford in the driveway of our new house, 

just blocks from Noter Dame.  

A quilt of snow beds down the rooftops. 

The street glistens with ice 

under the glow of lamplights. 

It feels like Christmas but it’s February. 

I leap from the car to the white spears hanging 

from windows, snap one with an ungloved hand, 

lift up my face to the stars, the dagger 

melting in my hand, trickling down my forearm

into my sleeve, soaking my sweater, but my gaze

stays pinned to the blaze above and my body 

starts a spin to take them all in.  Like a skater, 

I hold out my arms as if to welcome all those suns 

into my life, clutching the spear as if it were a wand. 

I forget about my cold, wet sweater and spin. 

I do not yet know the earth too spins under me, 

and so the moon and planets and sun, each spinning 

around itself, each in its own orbit around 

the others, all of us together, 

my family, the earth, the galaxies, 

all at our own paces, spinning, 

pushing into the darkness, 

where there is absolutely nothing 

until we get there.

You there, cash

You there, cash, remember how it used to be?
You played so hard to get at times, I thought
I wanted you more than you wanted me.
I made a fool of myself for you--
The things I said and did to keep you near--
Some of it I regret but honestly, most I don’t.
Marriage is a risky business. It takes time to learn
who you are and who I am and how to live together.
Hallmark may not make a card for how we feel but that’s ok,
I never knew such loving as I’ve had with you,
through thick and thin. (Remember the times
I threw my purse at you?)
Didn't we always make up to find
we cared more for each other every year?
To be honest, I cared way too much:
Shouldn’t have let you make so many of
My decisions, but it’s too late now for us to part.

Does he know?

In the last weeks, I wonder, does my father knows he's dying,
I wonder, does he care.
I try to decipher his mood as he sits
with a wool blanket on his lap
and later in the naval hospital where his body
becomes so light the nurse carries him to bed.
I seek a name for his mood so I can dwell
on its meaning, approach it appropriately.
But as a dying man he is not much different
from the man who was not dying.
I read that EEGs of alcoholics show flattened brain
waves so I picture my father’s mind as an uneven
table top and think of what his sister says,
Francis is not a great husband, not a great father,
but he is a wonderful brother.
He is not one but three people, maybe more.
My father is funny that way.
We are all funny that way.
After his last breath, we stare down at him,
not knowing it was the last, waiting for one more
flutter, a lurch or gurgle and when none comes,
I joke to my mother, Now you can tell me he wasn’t my father.
It is mean to say it right there where my father’s skin
still gives out a bit of heat, and his mouth hangs open wide,
as if he is stunned by my hardness.

If I opened my mouth....

My mother believes a good husband--
a man with a good job--is the foundation
of a happy life and that's why she sends me to
modeling school.
Modeling is a sport of good bones and self sacrifice,
a sport where you stride across slippery platforms
like Cinderella turned stripper, hips first, arms swaying,
shoulders square and steady.
I have to push myself to walk in those very high heels
without looking down, make my big fake smile
look natural.
 Miss McCarthy! Posture! the instructor shouts
 and I try to wobble less. Pose! she shouts, this means
with a toe turned out, not in, with chin tilted slightly,
eyes straight ahead.
Some exhilarating spirit is entering me day by day,
turning me into a girl who likes to be witty,
who didn’t want a husband but a lover,
and maybe more than one,
maybe even more than two.
But if I let all that come out,
my mother would have hit me.