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Sunday morning, 1965.
I’m ten, Tom’s eight.
Comics are in color
in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.
Church is starting soon
but Tom says he won’t go.
But he will go
because our parents will say so.

                    328

Regrettably, my final happy day
(in this brief life my count of these is low . . .),
arrived and changed my heart to melting snow,
perhaps a sign of sadness and dismay.

Like one with tertian fever on the way
as muscles, pulse, and introspection slow,
I felt that way too, though I didn’t know
my shameful wealth would waste away.

Sparrows deck the leafless tree
like plump brown figs that bob and flit,
hopping in random synergy
from twig to twig. They fluff and sit,

alert and restless in cold air,
till in a flash the troupe takes flight
into the Chinese holly, where
they chirp like ghost birds. Out of sight,

whatever caused their harsh surprise
departs, and they resume their poses
coolly. Inside, my mother lies
waning beside the hothouse roses.

Birds flying too high for me to see what birds.
Crows, if I had to guess, five or six crows,
All rising higher, higher, only to fall
A little way, then rise again, compose
The sky, calm now, near empty, natural.

No consolation waits within this calm
For grief at having lost a child, grief friends
Have come to know firsthand and call despair.
No beauty of quiet skies can make amends—
The loss is more than emptiness can bear.

1
I invite Simone Weil to dinner

          —from the Italian:  passage; passing;
          a crossing/the transition between vocal registers

Every singer finds that rift in their voice,
let’s say B for you, D-flat for me, that refuses
breath passage, forced to a rasp. You have to find a way
to get where you’re going as if nothing difficult is going on.