Her mother’s lips awoke me once when I was a visitor at 6 o’clock in the morning in Buffalo, New York, so many miles from Jacksonville: I heard the cars on the leaves in the avenue below me, the green walls of the room awake in the car’s red shining, and the cool air was filled with someone- my soft-skinned grandmother bent to kiss me, the blue flowers of her nightgown small dark pools in the early summer. And there was a cherry tree outside the kitchen window and her red lips were the red of black ripe cherries. All of this was when my grandmother was not dead, and before my mother became a hand, and when my father wanted to get an early start, so we were in Ohio by 8 o’clock. This is the artery that makes widows 100 percent of the time, and yours is 98 percent blocked, said the doctor to my father. The still mouth of death. The black heart of morning. They took an artery from the leg and redirected the mammary.
But even when she was not dead, my grandmother could not somersault towards me, nor to her daughter, nor kiss me ever again in the morning. Once, when thin white curtains blew in and out at the kitchen window, she felt her own mother’s hands, traced their green veins downwards- like cataracts the fabric in the breeze obscured the cherry. When I was a child, my soft-skinned grandmother, her gown a virtual perennial garden, her lips whispering nothing when they touched me, came into the room with clean, cold sheets, and kissed me.
-Maureen Morehead from A Sense of Time Left Larkspur Press, 2003
Here's a poem by Maureen Morehouse:
ReplyDeleteMy Mother Is a Hand
Her mother’s lips
awoke me once when I was a visitor
at 6 o’clock in the morning
in Buffalo, New York,
so many miles from Jacksonville:
I heard the cars on the leaves in the avenue below me,
the green walls of the room awake in the car’s red
shining,
and the cool air was filled with someone-
my soft-skinned grandmother bent to kiss me,
the blue flowers of her nightgown
small dark pools in the early summer.
And there was a cherry tree outside the kitchen
window
and her red lips were the red of black ripe cherries.
All of this was when my grandmother was not dead,
and before my mother became a hand,
and when my father wanted to get an early start,
so we were in Ohio by 8 o’clock.
This is the artery that makes widows
100 percent of the time,
and yours is 98 percent blocked,
said the doctor to my father.
The still mouth of death.
The black heart of morning.
They took an artery from the leg
and redirected the mammary.
But even when she was not dead,
my grandmother could not somersault towards me,
nor to her daughter,
nor kiss me ever again in the morning.
Once, when thin white curtains
blew in and out at the kitchen window,
she felt her own mother’s hands,
traced their green veins downwards-
like cataracts the fabric in the breeze obscured the cherry.
When I was a child, my soft-skinned grandmother,
her gown a virtual perennial garden,
her lips whispering nothing when they touched me,
came into the room with clean, cold sheets, and kissed
me.
-Maureen Morehead
from A Sense of Time Left
Larkspur Press, 2003