80spoems/glads

YOUR MOTHER DIES AND SOMEONE SENDS PINK GLADIOLA

After my German shepherd dog, who bit children and broke my heart because we had to part, I vowed to never have another pet until she showed up on the block, without a patch of hair left below her head, and scared to death of something, whatever it was she had run away from. My neighbor taped her into a cardboard box to take her away but she clawed her way out and hung on. We began to feed her and one day I walked by saying, “Sarafina, her name should be Sarafina.” I had just seen Black Orpheus and the name stuck in my mind. Sarafina was sitting on the chair on my neighbor’s porch at the time and from that point forward more or less became mine, and having become mine I went through all the necessary justifications, telling myself perhaps it was time I did something to save one of God’s creatures, and on and on, justifying reality which would go on quite without my bitter attempts at rationalization. Her hair grew back and she became a pretty cat though throughout the ten years she lived with us, she would periodically return to the freaked-out state of mind she was in when she came to us.

He always had red gladiolus on his mantle,
large, untrimmed stems covering the breadth
of half the space, which he kept in a tinted
glass vase since he moved in with his new girl-
friend. Before that he would have a sprig or
two, here and there in a Dr. Pepper bottle,
having distributed the remainder of the bunch
to friends about town. But after the move,
he would have a full bouquet, large, red,
magnificent — looking terribly House and
Garden over the fireplace. They made a bold
impression, like a red heart beating, something
so over-alive its presence dominated the room,
saying red/glad/heart/beating: too much life.
Bump bump. Bump bump. Bump bump.

I took Sarafina to the clinic to leave her forever and sat looking at the flower stand but could not buy the gladiolus. Later in the day I went back because I had had it in my mind to buy red glads since I saw his. When there were no red ones left, I justified it through a rather lengthy analysis of hue and meaning, and what was emerging at the time – pink, peach and more visibly tender, so I left with the perfect compromise and the conscious intention to heal/to replace/to comfort/to mourn/to say another goodbye/to wrap my heart in pink again until it would
mend. Strong pulse. Beat red. Bump bump. Bump bump.

The pink gladiolus on my mantle were too overbearing. I moved them to a lower shelf, deciding they were too formal for me, remembering mixed bouquets, wild flowers, simple blooms which grow with less calculation. They did not fit with life there, and stood out like some false attempt that made no sense with empty picture frames, unread papers, life that didn’t know yet where it lived.

I went for a drive by the beach in my old car
wanting to not part with something, my heart a
picture in my mind filled with tiny fissures,
wanting not to part with anything, old cars,
used lives, empty houses, wrong men, scared
cats.

It wasn’t that Sarafina died that hurt so much but the fact that I had to abandon her and come home to clean the counter where she had slept in her last days, my mind saying life goes on, life always continues and those of us still living will eat dinner tonight as we always have. No color/no bloom will lessen the rudeness that living seems to be.

I went for a drive by the beach in my old car
wanting not to part with anything, the quicken
ing pulse of fissures filling my eyes, a voice
within reminding me – your mother dies and
someone sends pink gladiolus.80spoems/goodbyes

In the middle of the night on my birthday:

I began to cry,
great excessive sobs,
tears I can’t justify,
feelings as utterly unreasonable
as feelings always are:
why did he leave,
why did he leave.

We wrote it off to
too much brandy,
yes, too much brandy,
too many hard goodbyes.

1985