All day the snow has been melting.
This morning, my son said, “It’s like
a big battle between two forces,
the cold and the warm. Which one
do you think will win, Mom?”
You and I both know no one wins.
I’ve been thinking so much
about your ear—the unexpected
rupturing. This is when it is hard
to be so far away. I would like
to be near you to say soothing things
in your other ear. Not promises, of course.
But poems.
The other day I was driving home
through the eastern part of the state.
There is nearly nothing there but road
for miles and miles and miles. Nothing,
and a wire fence to hold back
all that nothing. It was a wonderful
place to think of nothing, but
my mind kept returning instead
to the day when we walked
along the Platte and said
hello to everyone we passed.
So few of them said
hello back.
Why do we remember
what we do? How could we
have known that day would be the one
that would become a jewel in our minds.
Why that day ,wading at the confluence
and posing like statues against a wall,
when there have been so many
other days brilliant days together?
Today, it was brilliant, surely,
but I’d be surprised if I remembered it
years from now. Luster in the trees
and the scent of pumpkin pie in the air.
I swear all of main street smelled of spice.
What I would like to remember, though,
is that this is the day that your hearing
began to come back, only that’s not
what you said in your message.
Remember how we laughed
when the people we greeted
pretended that they could not hear us?
But I hear you, Julie, I hear you
most days, even from far away.
It’s not a phrase or word that I hear,
just the ring of your being. Rilke says that what
batters you becomes your strength.
I might whisper that line in your one
good ear. Or I might just whisper
your name the way the sun says
“World, I am here to warm you,”
the way the cold says, “Snow,
I am here to keep you whole.”
Yours,
Memory and remembrance are fickle critters, aligned to their own criteria, never mind ours.
Give me a bit more time and I’ll figure why you start this epistle-poem with your son’s comments, rather than, “I’ve been thinking so much about your ear.” Even though the one ear is ruptured, it’s in it I’d whisper the encouragement, so to ensure it especially heard; but also so that what hears beyond the ear would also hear. (Not so unlike your hearing her, even from far away.)
Will tomorrow gift us another walk along the Platte with yet another member of your tribe?
I like the letter format but I agree with Ed about the opening, which also seems to force the closing. I like this spot very much for closing the letter down…
“It’s not a phrase or word that I hear,
just the ring of your being.”
I’m some of that nothing.
Held.
Held back.
By that barbed wire