BUCKLING HER NECKLACE

GARDEN MORNING

After stone setting, after morning

meditation on beauty, after reading

Francisco Goldman's Ordinary Seaman,

a plane overhead, small one, single engine,

Karen calls me into bathroom

to buckle her necklace

and I say I'm supposed to kiss your neck

and interrupt your day

                                    when

I kiss her neck, she turns

to kiss me all puckered up fresh

lipstick wet drying on my lips

drawing me two ways at once

            I was rubbing a stone

when I sat down in the garden chair

I had to put it down to write

what was coming up deep down

things, Karen's inner life, interrupting

the brushing of my teeth, mother

of the child with spinal bifida

on Facebook, baby taken off Medicare/

Medicaid because he's been in hospital

30 days--that's it, Buster--from now on

all expenses, KChing, KChing, Mom,

How does one write that poem?

I've been in the garden all day,

I've been kissing Karen on the neck

buckling her necklace, while she's

sewing tubies, fabric belts

of soft cotton flannel with giraffes

and foxes tan and brown, belts

over the baby's skin to keep tubes

coming from belly button

or stomach somehow, that's not

exactly accurate, it's messy lipstick

love, the child, the child, a fabric belt

with flaps and tunnels, guiding

and securing tubes. Earlier

this day, Karen shows me a video

of the baby, struggling to roll over

on his tummy, Oh! he'll get there,

he'll get there, he wants

to make it, to get there, so bad!

Can he laugh? I ask. He can smile,

she says. I come out from the bathroom

naked, shaken. I can't imagine

Karen in her sewing meditation,

what it feels like, for her, for this child

she knows through this soft belt

threading itself in her fingers,

me so all alone in a book,

a book too, of wonders,

in the garden, a garden day.

Jim Bodeen

14-28 June 2019