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Alice Friman
The Pitiless Drift
Here in Georgia, summer
arrives in April, hunkers down
and doesn’t move. By late September,
leaves, weary of gasping for air
and fighting the forest’s impatience
for straight up and naked,
give up their chatter, and hang
limp as ducks in a Dutch painting.
So when the tenth month comes,
henna bright and tooting her honey horn,
they’re not fooled. They know clarity of purpose.
For didn’t they too have it once—riding the new air,
tossing their reflections to the forest brook
in their May day, heyday of pure light
and shimmering?
And didn’t they gulp it down, opening
their mouths to eat the sun, and wasn’t
that priestlike job their joy?
Oh, how will death find us
if we are not what we were?
Footfalls of slanted light
linger in the wards of the dying—
solace of the purple aster, tangle
of thistle and red berry. See,
in the mirror of the winding brook,
the queen of siege and necessity. See
how she pauses, head cocked and listening.
The faint echo of her machine gun
stuttering through the forest, as all around her
in a feathered blessing, the gold ducks fall.
Aunt Nellie’s Walk
An oscillating fan. That’s
how my Nellie walked.
A metronome on tiny feet—
hips sashaying side to side,
swinging in importance.
Now she sleeps in a chair,
unable to recall how she once
marched behind the fire truck
in the parade and danced
the two-step with flowers
in her hair. Her mind, a blowout
in a bowl. But given a nurse
with biceps and a bully streak
to hoist her up, glue her
to a walker and command, Walk—
you’d see it. Even if her feet
couldn’t move and she were reduced
to reflex under the cotton gown
tied in back, there—beneath the flesh
trembling to be off the bone at last—
that built-in hint of impudent wag.
Oh Lord, give us back this day
a little butter for our bread.
What shame to have such flaunt
gone from this world. The tap
tap of summer sandals,
the swinging counterpoint
of her arms, the lilting seesaw
of her hips. I swear, that woman’s
to-and-fro could hypnotize a watch.
My Aunt Nellie, soul of propriety,
queen of good causes, trailing
in her wake such endearing treason.
First published in The
Georgia Review
© Copyright, 2014,
Alice Friman. |