USA

dslockward@aol.com

THE PROPERTIES OF LIGHT

Isn’t the whole world heaven’s coast?
— from Heaven’s Coast, Mark Doty

I come for the light, the artist says.
Dawn and again at sunset,
he goes to the Provincetown beach,
sets up his easel. At just the right angle,
he can catch that light on the canvas.

He uses words like shimmer, glow, radiance.
He talks about what our forefathers must have seen
when they woke that first dawn just off the coast.
He darkens the room, lights up the wall
with his slides. We see
not the play of light against dark,
but the play of light against light.
We see it in the rocks, the beached whale,
the bones of dead fish.

In the last days of my father’s life,
he kept calling me—Elaine, Elaine—
even though I was in the next room
or the same room and he didn’t need
or want anything. He kept doing it.
If I answered, he’d know
he was still alive, and if I didn’t,
he was dead.
The last time he called, he held out
his hand, all blue veins and bones now.
His head fell back, and the skin
on his face smoothed out.

What I remember is the light,
how it slipped into the room and took him.
In that moment, the light was different,
and I saw my father as I had never seen
him before—young, full of wonder,
and in no pain at all.

(published in Wind)

READING THE SIGNS

I want to read the love letters my mother burned,
the ones my father wrote before they married.

Could the man I remember have said
something romantic?—found a garden
in her face, lilies and cherries, or like Romeo,
compared her eyes to stars?
Would he have pined under a heartless moon,
said he needed her as roses need sun?

He once gave my mother
a geode—hard granite exterior, cavity inside
spilling out amethysts—
profusion of lavender and purple.

My father hurled words like rocks,
would have said something like,
Susan, I want you
here, now. Come back, and this time, stay,
and she, foolish woman, would have felt
a tremor, and thought him a man
who could move heaven and earth.

(published in Miller's Pond)

SAYING IT RIGHT
Frankie LaMura, who sat
next to me in biology class,
stood in my living room.
Tough boy off his turf,
he wanted to take me
bowling.
He looked from me
to my mother
to my grandmother
and wanting
the right words
opened his mouth
and said, “Youse goils
is all beautiful.”
Frankie who bowled
strike after strike,
his muscular arms
an aphrodisiac,
whose hands trembled
when we sliced open
our frogs and when
he touched me—
Frankie LaMura who
in the backseat
of a souped up ’59 Chevy
asked me to
correct his grammar,
as if I could fix a boy
the way I might
fix a sentence—
Frankie who had eyes
black as olives,
who wore pressed slacks
for me, who I wanted
in jeans, to whom
I wanted to say only,
Shut up and kiss me,
who kept kissing
long after I stopped
keeping score—
Frankie whose broken
English fixed everything
wrong when I
was seventeen,
whose eyes, lips,
and hands said all
I wanted to hear.

(published in Wind Magazine)

© All Copyright, Diane Lockward.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.