Wednesday, February 25, 2004

POEM OF THE DAY Memory Walks on Water  for Verna Cauthorn Pattillo   I smell grandmother as the breeze sends dead leaves scudding across the city park pond—   Her hands smooth the fabric take another stitch—   The water uncreases itself becomes again an empty blue mirror reflecting the last honks of the departing geese—   Memory walks on water, a shattered lance of light dancing on the deeps—   Her hands smooth the fabric take another stitch—   I savor the taste of ribbon cane syrup and belgian waffle as she tells me how as a child she helped to gather the cane her father cut when the families would gather to refine their own sweetness—   Her hands smooth the fabric take another stitch—   I feel the cool sting of peroxide as grandma washes the dried blood from my hair. She daubs at stitched wounds that made Dad sick just to look. I listen as she cheerfully tells stories on Grandpa early in the morning, after the fight, home from the hospital—   "And you wash that coat in cold water, the blood will come right out."   Her hands smooth the fabric take another stitch—   Another gust of wind teases salt from the corner of my eyes— Another space of calm—   The water uncreases itself becomes again a mirror for this observer reflecting on the chiaroscuro of miracles limned by the sun in rainclouds—   Grandmother walks upon the water a departing ray of light dancing above the clouds as the rain begins to fall.   Dana Pattillo   My Grandmother died on March 3, 1999. I wrote this poem a few days before, when I received word from my father that she was dying.  The family had celebrated her 90th birthday a month before, and at the party I saw in her eyes that she was already leaving us. I was with her when she died.  I wrote to my friends that morning from my father's computer:   My Grandma died on the stroke of 3am this morning.  Elspeth, my father's wife Pat, and I were there, everyone else had gone home to bed exhausted with the waiting.  We held her feet and her hands, and stroked her hair, and she just stopped breathing.  Still, that last hour was the longest hour I have ever lived.  At one point, I was holding her hand telling her goodbye and I began to cry,  and a tear welled up in her eye.  'Til then I didn't think she could hear us.  She died not too long after that.  She lived a long life and a good one in spite of much hardship, and she died pretty peacefully, in the presence of people who were loving her and talking to her and touching her right to the end.  But Death is still terrible.  Das Engel ist schrecklich.  My chest aches and I can't sleep.   I'm at my father's house and I'm typing this on my stepmother's computer. My sweetheart who was so good to stay with us 'til the end, is asleep in the guest bed.  She was exhausted.  There is a beautiful, merciless full moon outside the window of my old bedroom, now an office.  Grandma is with the Mothers. PoD 87 8:59:50 AM    comment []