KAREN'S BIRTHDAY WEEK IN THE NEW YEAR

 

KAREN’S BIRTHDAY WEEK IN THE NEW YEAR

I.

Three candles in the rain

when Karen comes into the room.

What’s the name of that quilt company?

Missouri Star. I want to call it Morning Star.

But it’s Hamilton, Missouri.

This was the season of your advent, Karen.

All those games we played with two decks of cards,

the ones with the quilt pattern.

Three games a day, errors in proofreading

the cards. Another translation.

Poetry fulfills and it doesn’t.

You’re 79 years old, telling me,

There’s another earthquake in Japan.

If one wants to express and deepen one’s faith,

why write a poem? What is it

touches us in the psalms? Leaving behind

the prose of our daily lives, we cross

into a strangeness, an adventure of sorts,

even in the doctor’s office, handing you

my pen, the fuscia-colored Parker.

Quilters hold the world,

every square a story, every story

a container of loss. Karen telling me

of the mother who lost her son,

whose daughter-in-law, in treatment,

is getting her life together with a quilt

of muted colors for the daughter-in-law.

II.

This is all practice, Karen,

finishing with your clothes before seven,

lighting candles. “My clothes?”

you ask, walking into the living room,

empty and dark but for the two of us

and the candles. What a day

we had with our children ending the year!

And last night we were alone,

watching, listening, soul-stirring voices

of Yolanda Adams and songs of Lionel Ritchie.

And now some light from windows.

I’ll let the candles burn and then

perhaps a walk. Always

more than one piece of reality

available. Three meals for twelve people

in the last seven days. 2023

will be remembered as the year

climate change arrived. Taking notes

from The Bible and Poetry,

“We cross a threshold, find ourselves

among the strange.” Reading psalms,

I’m the only one in the room without an Iphone.

My brother comes over to watch the game.

Your left ankle, fractured years ago, unnoticed,

has been x-rayed, and placed in a plastic boot,

where it’s been for a month. Still, the oatmeal

was good with apple and cinnamon; making

toast for you on this day, even greater joy,--

we made that strawberry freezer jam this summer

after berry picking—you so much, being all that has ever

been real. What I followed, God visible, in you,

this terrible weight to carry. No angels,

no Magnificat, the muse for a lost

young man just home from war. At the beginning

you sustained me in my hungry search

to be human. There was so much work to do

before you could be yourself, and you, too,

with your own work. So much to learn. All

that work of having to be someone’s God.

No angels and your own mother gone.

III.

And you carried us without complaint,

once or twice perhaps, sideways

something offhand, No,

I never felt that way,

so when I read your poems,

they were just poems. We were raising

our kids, and my work at the bank,

it felt important, and I had responsibility

to my customers. After this card game,

when we get up from the table,

I’m going out to my studio.

That embroidery I’m adding,

this morning it just might work.

And getting up from the table

you step into your life with fabric,

an assemblage artist, creator of landscapes,

a colorist, perhaps most subtle

in use of threads. Filling our home

with beauty, ranging from Japanese silks

to Americana folk art on coffee tables.

After birthing others, bringing them along

assenting to vision-dreams in your listening,

birthing yourself again and again.

Love, Jim

2-24 January 2024