slices of glass in the air, be his last

appearance here.

Farewell Poem

(for M. M. O., 1880–1974)

The big, cut iceberg waits

outside the harbor like a spaceship.

Sends in emissaries: cold

chopped fish, floating cakes,

canoes of ice white as brides.

Lurks just beyond the warm

furred lip of the harbor, summer

berries in the bushes, loud stink

of fish drying on salty wooden

slats. Waits. Hides nine

tenths of its iron implacable

bulk under the belt of the water,

frigid as cods’ teeth, even

now in July. The sea bathes

her endless pale scarred hips.

The berg sits, cute as a hat,

snowy as egret feathers, waiting

to call the next one out to the other

world beyond the absolutely

frozen vessel.

She walks down

to the water without her walker.

With none of her three canes she was always

losing, joking about, looking for,

finding over her arm. She just

had her hair done, silver curls

obedient as ivy tendrils

over her child’s brow. She wears

the grey dress with a white collar,

sensible shoes, white socks,

diamond pin, sets her foot

on the cloudy crystal of an ice floe

and floats out to her mother, floats

out to the white iceberg waiting

ninety-three years for hot death

to deliver his favorite daughter home to

the cool white long room,

lace curtains from the parlor flying

like flags in the summer sky.

The Winter After Your Death

(for Katie Sheldon Brennan)

The long bands of mellow light

across the snow

narrow slowly.

The sun closes her gold fan

and nothing is left but black and white—

the quick steam of my breath, the dead

accurate shapes of the weeds, still, as if

pressed in an album.

Deep in my body my green heart

turns, and thinks of you. Deep in the

pond, under the thick trap

door of ice, the water moves,

the carp hangs like a sun, its scarlet

heart visible in its side.

Miscarriage

When I was a month pregnant, the great

clots of blood appeared in the pale

green swaying water of the toilet.

Dark red like black in the salty

translucent brine, like forms of life

appearing, jelly-fish with the clear-cut

shapes of fungi.

That was the only appearance made by that

child, the dark, scalloped shapes

falling slowly. A month later

our son was conceived, and I never went back

to mourn the one who came as far as the

sill with its information: that we could

botch something, you and I. All wrapped in

purple it floated away, like a messenger

put to death for bearing bad news.

The End

We decided to have the abortion, became

killers together. The period that came

changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple

who had been for life.

As we talked of it in bed, the crash

was not a surprise. We went to the window,

looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming

curved shears of glass as if we had