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The Domestic Life
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January 17, 2017
Holding Bernadette
In a room without windows, my infant daughter
struggles in the underwater
glow of the bilirubin light.
She clutches my finger, opens muddy eyes,
and gives me a puzzled look.
The machines blink and sing. I have no answers.
Even with three tubes, she can't
get enough glucose. I feel ashamed
for all the gray mornings driving to work
when I've half-wished to get it over.
I tell her we'll go fishing,
then explain how fish are funny, slippery animals
who live in the Gulf, miles away.
Her stupid heart! It thinks it can save itself
by cutting off circulation to her limbs.
I want to save myself by turning away,
but Elaine insists we return at midnight
to hold Bernadette.
How could the pioneers have toiled across the plains,
leaving child after child under empty stones?
She breathes softly, holding on,
her heart beating with its savage wish.
I want to tell her
how I felt at home once
in a tent west of Morogoro in Africa.
Waking in late afternoon,
I saw far away across the savannah
a family of giraffes moving in golden light
with their awkward, watery gait.
The grass billowed so peacefully,
as if holding all the generations.
In the parking garage
Elaine and I look at each other.
What is there to say?
Beneath her blouse her breasts are bound
to stop the milk.
Male Grief
In the pale after-Labor Day sun of Cape Cod
he sits on the dark grass in a weathered chair
reading Black Elk Speaks while his family
churns around him. I date his daughter
and for the first time have come to meet him,
but he keeps apart. We eat lobster,
then the men watch the Olympics on TV
while the women clean up. His daughter
teaches me to speak into his right ear
instead of the left, knocked cold
when he fell from a farm-horse as a boy.
I strain to imagine him at half his size,
waking in the chill Ohio dawn to milk the cows,
alone in the barn, steam floating from the bucket.
When I sit by myself on the rocky beach,
I wonder if men are somehow injured
in their ability to love.
Over the years I read his long, typed letters
which reveal nothing of how he feels.
I watch as he canes chairs, braids rugs,
and refinishes stands for his absent children.
I notice how he places himself at tables
so strangers won't know about the ear.
Until one morning I see him
at the end of a hospital corridor.
When he is told that his granddaughter has died,
he begins to cry as though he himself
were trying to become the baby who has gone.
In a room without windows, my infant daughter
struggles in the underwater
glow of the bilirubin light.
She clutches my finger, opens muddy eyes,
and gives me a puzzled look.
The machines blink and sing. I have no answers.
Even with three tubes, she can't
get enough glucose. I feel ashamed
for all the gray mornings driving to work
when I've half-wished to get it over.
I tell her we'll go fishing,
then explain how fish are funny, slippery animals
who live in the Gulf, miles away.
Her stupid heart! It thinks it can save itself
by cutting off circulation to her limbs.
I want to save myself by turning away,
but Elaine insists we return at midnight
to hold Bernadette.
How could the pioneers have toiled across the plains,
leaving child after child under empty stones?
She breathes softly, holding on,
her heart beating with its savage wish.
I want to tell her
how I felt at home once
in a tent west of Morogoro in Africa.
Waking in late afternoon,
I saw far away across the savannah
a family of giraffes moving in golden light
with their awkward, watery gait.
The grass billowed so peacefully,
as if holding all the generations.
In the parking garage
Elaine and I look at each other.
What is there to say?
Beneath her blouse her breasts are bound
to stop the milk.
Male Grief
In the pale after-Labor Day sun of Cape Cod
he sits on the dark grass in a weathered chair
reading Black Elk Speaks while his family
churns around him. I date his daughter
and for the first time have come to meet him,
but he keeps apart. We eat lobster,
then the men watch the Olympics on TV
while the women clean up. His daughter
teaches me to speak into his right ear
instead of the left, knocked cold
when he fell from a farm-horse as a boy.
I strain to imagine him at half his size,
waking in the chill Ohio dawn to milk the cows,
alone in the barn, steam floating from the bucket.
When I sit by myself on the rocky beach,
I wonder if men are somehow injured
in their ability to love.
Over the years I read his long, typed letters
which reveal nothing of how he feels.
I watch as he canes chairs, braids rugs,
and refinishes stands for his absent children.
I notice how he places himself at tables
so strangers won't know about the ear.
Until one morning I see him
at the end of a hospital corridor.
When he is told that his granddaughter has died,
he begins to cry as though he himself
were trying to become the baby who has gone.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review