planet itself were departing, and I was

standing on something, waving to our home as it got

smaller. And then, there she was,

the material object, and yet fresh

as a fresh-born baby released from the sea

of the womb. Who could have feared the new, the

sparse motionless soldier of her.

And an hour later, once I had turned

away, and come back, she wasn’t at all like the

night-terrors figure who used to hover

above me in my bed, before sleep. Dead,

her forehead did assume a faint

shell of garden-snail look, but she was

nothing like my bedroom’s airborne prone night-

hecate with the leaking face.

No longer. She was gone to where

they cannot scare you, anymore.

And no one, now, stood between me

and my life—unless there was a small figure

taking shape in me, like the scepter on

the hospice gurney. From now on,

it couldn’t be my mother who was fearsome to me.

It would have to be me.

Looking for Galway on the Vermont Mountainside

The overcast was complete, except for

a small rip, to the east, where steam was

breathing through, glacier blue.

The world was soaked, I climbed uphill

in undersea shoes, waded through sop

clover, blossoms spittled with rain like

egg-cases of fishing spiders who

carry their unborn in bubbles in their mouth.

There were patches where hay showed through the wild grasses,

there were

smooth declivities, where a deer or

bear might have lain down. But I could not

find the grave. Where are you, I cried out,

under my breath, where are you. I was not

a mother who has lost her child in a crowd,

I was never, to him, a mother, always

like an aunt, though younger, warm but stern,

but not a sister, not family—

a stranger, a fellowe stranger. For a moment

I thought I would not find him, that he’d gone

back by means of the periodic

table to his component elements,

and then, as I rose, dew-booted, the top of the

hill began

to rise slowly

above the top of the hill—the slate

table, and beyond it, on the brow of the mountain,

the dolmen of granite, like a column of ancient

rough flesh, and will, and at

his foot a flat rock, like an open

book. Joe Pye weed, rich dirt,

bladder campion—“You’re a garden!”

I said to my best friend, and took up

a little roundish golden rock—

“Can I borrow this?”—

from the turned soil, and put it on

his footstone. The ions in the air were bouncing

like fine sprinkle, and the bud scales and

spiracles of the young tree

planted near him were gold against the ruddy,

smooth, amber, elm bark,

I gripped and kissed the tree, I gripped and

kissed the tough, bright-specked maul of the

metamorphic stone, and descended

the latch-mat stairs and bared my feet

down to the chilled skin, and found in the

laundry basket a couple of big

socks without mates, and I accepted them