Through the Sun-Stained Curtains at the End of a Long, Long Day

Through the Sun-Stained Curtains at the End of a Long, Long Day

                                                                     

                                                                      Memory

is the simplest form of prayer.  Today you glow

like warm precious lumps of amber in my mind.

From "Black Mountain" by Marge Percy

 If it’s true—about memory being

the simplest form

of prayer, what happens

when memory becomes

a thin linen

tea towel

and the tea, tepid,

poured and misplaced

next to the burning

cigarette filter, next

to the day’s

unopened mail—

the door’s open just

that her cats come

and go

with the flies, with the

close of summer

wind, with the tide

going out,

half a mile away.  Earlier,

when she first came,

she’d clam, the flats

briny as a third child in quick

succession, and that

one up the beech

with a spoon, no shoes,

sunk like gulls who

try to glide

but only get as far

as their squawk in

a south-east

breeze.  There’s

a half a peck in her

roller.  I remember.

Does that mean

I’m praying, simply,

or simply because

it’s clear today? But today

there is no tea. 

The linen, pissed

on by the feral

cats, has been turned out

of the room.

All that’s left

are those pocked black-

crusted scars

what her stray

cigarette embers

burned into the sheets

that still dress

her bed,

that still mark

a Hansel path

from the kitchen

to the bedroom,

then beyond

though I don’t know

where.  I simply

don’t…