On Saturday, we went to the memorial service for our friend Finny. My mother knew her, and her daughter, for over 35 years. And, Finny being who she was, she had first my mother, and then my mother and father, and then my brother, (at different times) live with her in her house in Seal Beach. Finny welcomed all of our friends into the house, and during the holidays we would all sleep on the floors and couches, and as long as we folded our blankets and did our dishes, Finny was totally cool with it. Finny was smart and funny and stubborn. Someday, I will write a poem for her. But, there are these poems. I've been revisiting them for years, embroidering them, unravelling them. I call them love letters, because they are. Though they are as music to the deaf and color to the blind, they are the only way I know to say: I loved you. I remember you. I will always remember you.
Dear Holly,
on a clear day
the incensed church
warmed with the bodies
of mourners
standing, shoulder to shoulder,
my mother suddenly sobbed
and I
turned to see
you
carrying your
brother’s coffin
through the weighted silence
you, bearing, age 14
him, borne, age 17
I do not know how a sister bears
the burden of her brother
on her shoulder
(even Antigone did not bear so much)
but I know: this then
is now
our dubious equality
life in our wombs
and death on our shoulders
Dear John,
this is not a dear john letter
(though it is a farewell).
of the dead, nothing but good:
but if I had thought only good of you
I would not write this poem.
you were not subtle,
not elegant
not complex.
I didn’t like you.
…but I was attracted to you.
(I liked your curly blond hair,
your easy entitlement)
You, so American in your youth
your ignorance and
your equal innocence
your blind faith and
your practicality.
Once I flew with you
a slow yellow Cessna
over the dry valley
crossed by man-inflicted scars
back to the mountains.
We talked through microphones,
our voices distorted.
You had such capable hands;
I did not fear.
I learned these things from your obituary:
Captain John T. Berger, Sonora, Age 27.
My age.
Our age, for the last time.
Though I did not know you
and though I did not love you
your death shot through me
made me trans parent.
You died in a training flight
cool night in a California desert
mountains framed your death
as they framed your life.
our life. my life.
Your death taught me, as your life could not.
Because we did not know,
when we were 15, 16, 17, together,
that you (we, I) had so few days to be
cradled by mountains
you did not know that all your lifes days
thoughts dreams hopes fears
would lead you to the dark tarmac
one last fierce flight
over the edge to infinity.
but now I know
(though it is hard to remember)
that I have only a certain number of days
to worry about the mortgage and the environment
and crazy right-wing presidents you would have voted for.
Now I know that
someday, all the days of my life
will lead me to a place
ringed with mountains
where I, too, cross
into the fearless blue
guided, I hope,
by hands
as capable
as yours.
Dear Marlinka,
You were an old friend.
I was a child when we met.
I was twelve or so.
You seemed ageless to me.
Rings glittered on your fingers
laughter in your hazel eyes
tactlessness in your every breath
“What a pompous-stuffed-shirt” you said, about
the president of the college.
“How lucky it’s a rental” you said,
to him, about his house,
“because otherwise who could stand
all this tacky country-kitschy stuff?”
“My wife did the decorating” he said.
You laughed. I laughed. He didn’t.
You knew what you liked
and said what you thought.
Even then, I knew that made
you a jewel of a woman,
a pearl without price.
You taught me how to bargain
for diamonds, though I have yet
to use the knowledge. I thought
you’d be with me, I thought
we would pour over jewels together
sometime. Instead, I hold up
my memory of you, your life
crystallized by your death, and
pour over its facets, knowing
that I only see you from a few angles,
through child eyes.
Your husband
scattered your ashes
in the garden
that you loved/sacrificed
so that your dogs
could have a place
to play
two of them are buried there
too
still keeping time
with you
I’m still looking for you.
Waiting for you come around the corner
laughing and giving us shit for believing
you were really dead, that you could
possibly do something as tasteless
and common as die.
(Oh God) I never want to see again a man scattering the ashes of his wife who he loved so much loves so much still loves (oh god) I don’t want to know that ashes have these fragments these little pieces of bone that don’t get burned away but remain I don’t want to see the beloved body of a friend be contained in a small box I don’t want to see a husband cry as he says (oh) “Welcome home Marli I love you so much” as alone he lets you go into the wind and the earth and the trees that you loved and the dogs that you loved and the garden that you tended I don’t ever want to do it again to lean on a metal fence on a hot day and cry these useless tears for myself and for him and for everyone because I know that I’ll have to do this again and again and again and so will we all even when we pretend like we won’t even when we pretend like we don’t like there’s time for all this bullshit like it really matters when all it comes down to is dust and bones and a hot fence under a blue sky. (oh and oh and oh and god.)
Dear Grandpa,
Today is my 28th birthday
and I’m wearing red cowboy boots
like the ones you bought for me
seventeen years ago,
just before you died.
Since I wore only lacy girly
fancy fussy dresses, it seemed an
odd choice at the time, and even now:
Red boots?
I was aggrieved.
I wanted things that sparkled
and danced in the sun. Light things.
I tried these boots on with bitterness.
Unfortunately, they fit. Did I not sparkle?
Was I not light?
What did you want for me,
what did you want for me,
why these heavy boots
neither discreet nor
genteel? Did you hope I would like
the sound of my footsteps, loud and
assured? Or were you as
thoughtless in this as in all other things?
Perhaps they were just cheap.
So this is what I got from you:
my name, and red cowboy boots;
and when I discovered another pair
(I didn’t think they would fit)
just before turning 28,
they seemed like a gift from you
a reminder
not to go quietly
and to prefer things
more solid than sparkling.
Dear Jesse,
There are these times when I think of you.
They seem to come without warning,
maybe prompted by the sight of someone
with a halo of hair like yours
or the sound of someone
with a crazy crackling laugh like yours.
If you were still alive I probably wouldn’t think of you at all.
It’s enough to make me believe in ghosts, and haunting.
Did you meet your death as joyously as you met your life?
When that jeep bore down on you
under the pitiless african sun
did you love life until that last,
shattering moment?
Did you regret in that split moment
that tweening
the years you spent building
a school for girls in an
ungrateful land?
Did you think of the redwoods
the fog the mountains and the sun
your home over the ocean
the clear light? That you would
never feel that earth beneath your feet again?
Did you think of the woman you wouldn’t,
after all, marry, and the children you
wouldn’t, after all, have? (Their blue eyes
their golden undisciplined curls)
If I knew you at all,
you thought none of this
but faced your death
in the form of a drunken Jeep driver
with a laugh and a shake of your haloed head.
Dear Jenny Sue,
Your letter is the hardest to write.
Is it because of our blue eyes,
our white blond hair,
because I remember you from
the earliest days of my life?
Because we dressed in matching clothes,
sang songs no one else knew
loved the Sound of Music
and repeated off-tune singings
of “Tomorrow”?
While I lived my life in dappled sunlight
never fully illuminated
you lived your life in shade
whipped about by miasma
and I couldn’t drag you out
give you grace
give you sun
when we met by chance
the last time I saw you
five years before your death
you seemed frantic
informed me in defiant tones
that you were in love with a woman
which I didn’t really care about
I couldn’t take my eyes
off your self-inflicted wounds
my mother sent me your obituary
it said you died suddenly
at your home
alone
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