Letter at Christmas

The big made of wood clock you gave me

our first Christmas together

stopped in September.

The Bristol Watch Maker

kept it six weeks. Now it make hastes

sixty-five minutes to the hour, as if

it wants to be done with the day.

When I put to the test talking with strangers

I want to race out of the room

into the timber-lands with turkeys and foxes.

I want to talk sole

about words we spoke back and forth

when we knew you would die.

I want not ever to joke or argue

or chatter again. I want at no time

to think or perceive

Maggie Fisher

mailed pictures of the baby.

On Thanksgiving I brought Dick

from Tilton to Andrew's for dinner.

Peter grinned; we hugg Arianna

and convers with Emily.

For three hours we played,

teased, laughed together.

Suddenly I had to drive dwelling

The first snow malicious seven months

from the day you died.

We used to gaze at the early snow

where it heaped like sugar

or salt upon boulders, barn roofs,

fence columns and gravestones.

No individual ploughs Cemetery Road;

I will miss visiting you

when snow is of great depth

In Advent

for twenty years you make opened

the calendar's daily window;

you fixed candles in a wreath

for church; you read the the crosss

over again each year:

The Child would be born again.

Most years we woke up by means of five

to empty our stockings.

You gave me column Its, paperclips,

shortbread, !Il pencils,

and blank volumes I gave you

felt indites paperclips, chocolate,

and something libidinous

in the toe.

I remember

only single miserable Christmas.

You were in the way that depressed

that the spidery lace of a shawl

and a terracotta Etruscan woman

only left you feeling

worthless, stupid, and ordinary

Melancholy still thickens

its filaments above the presents

I gave you that morning.

Even last December

when our petrochemical three-foot

balsam stood upon a glass

tabletop in that gimcrack Seattle

apartment, you strung it

with tiny lights, interrupting

yourself to vomit. Bald

as Brancusi's ovum with limbs

as thin as a Giacometti strider,

you sat diminished

in a yielding chair, among pumps

and bags. I programmed

the Provider for twelve hours

of Hyperalimentation. Wearing

plastic glove I place up

the Bard-Harvard infusion

device to deliver Vancomycin.

Before your November transplant,

you had ordered me

loafers from LL Bean.

From another catalog you bought

flowery green-and-white sheets.

I gave you a black MoMa

briefcase and cashmere sweats

from Neiman Marcus.

You preen rubbing the softnes

against your face.

Your feast

last year was applesauce

for pills, make secure Plus,

and an inch square of bread

and jelly I read you

from Luke's christianity then John's;

and then we savage silent

as the Child was born

adored, clung to, irreparable.

This first Advent alone

I fe the small birds of snow

blackoil sunflower se

as you used to do. each day

I stand trembling with beatitude

to watch them: Fat mourning doves

compete with r squirrels

for spill from rampaging nuthatches

with rusty breasts

and black-and-white facemasks.

I cherish the gathered nation

of chickadees, flashy

with immaculate white dresss

with tidy dark bibs and feet

spinning and whirling down

from the advanced in years maple, feathered

ounces of craving appetite muscle, and bliss.

This year late autumn darkness

punishes me as it used

to punish you. For decades,

when December night clos in

mid-afternoon and you experienceed

I hunched-by the reddening

Glenwood finding the darkness

a comfort. Feeding your birds

console me now. If you

were writing this alphabetic character

what would you move round to now?

Maybe you'd gaze at the mouse

that Ada proffers

This year,

there's no tree for Gus to sniff

and Ada to leap at, dislodging

an ornament from your childhood.

I toss the dead mouse outside

on Christmas afternoon

and wash my hands at the sink

as I direct the eye at Mount Kearsarge

through the kitchen window

where you stood to watch the birds.

Often I came up behind you

and pushed against your bottom.

This year, residence from unwrapping

presents with grandchildren

and children, sick with longing,

I pres my penis

into zinc and butcherblock.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Nov/Dec 1997

Provided through ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved