Getting Older
My father used to say, when I asked about
his younger days, that he didn’t remember.
I find myself using the same words.
The laundress hands me a photo album:
a still life of a bowl of apples.
A catalogue of death. The sun breaks through.
No colander, no saucepan,
only fruit on my window ledge.
A hearse parks outside, white lilies
through the glass.
The path on the river Hull is all mud
and reeds. At an overpass, the pylons of a bridge.
A coffin is dropped into the earth.
Upstairs, a wardrobe, forgotten,
and a box of books. I turn to the fire.
When I read the bible it doesn’t help.
The funeral car disappears,
only the cree and scrall of gulls,
and a broken fence. I walk down the creaking stairs
to an empty room.
The river Acheron is not far;
I don’t have an obol. I like to eat mandarins,
drink coffee, and free trapped crustaceans.
I have apples on my window ledge.
Midwinter
In silence, I hang clothes in an icy wind.
The fig tree has lost all its leaves,
and olives, soft like blueberries, have fallen
onto the road. You told me today
that if you died soon, I would know
what to do. I open my mouth, but only flakes
of snow drift out. On the mountain,
the pine trees were felled long ago.
The smell of fish fills the house,
and three cats wait at our door; howling,
not ready to starve. The sun is silver.
When you told me about dying,
did you mean that you knew something,
like the cats waiting at our door?
Whole colonies of bees collapse,
and still we act as if it’s their fault.
The ground gathers them up, like fallen pines
and figs that rot in summer.
