Her first assumption: life's hard, so Mom runs trails
through Amherst's woods. She sidesteps mud puddles,
clears mosquito larvae swimming there.
They've got a right, too, she says. Trim, spare
in words and body, she wears Bettie Page-
bangs, yoga pants and sunburst tops, her age
irrelevant. She trots around burdock root, cuts
the tap to grind for toothache, back spasms, dandruff,
abrupt as mushrooms sprouting in her wake,
or lichen spreading across the rocks she mistakes
for hunting cats at first. Even they've come back,
big cats sauntering past stopped trains, blown tracks,
retracing dead routes across the northern plains.
She's run through hot flashes, frost in her mane,
sidled around men and let them lap, her claws
retracted, still sharp, made long by menopause.
She sees herself in trillium blooming near
the brook, cracked robin's eggs, fronds growing clear
of jack-pine roots. Once, she'd have brought the fire,
a bladder full of kerosene and sparking wires,
but now she's grown more careful near her man.
Love pats, tongue prompts, powders—with help the plan
includes a morning hour—clary sage, wild
green oats, deer velvet, rose maroc, a vial
of blue pills—what hasn't this old May Queen
already fed her Corn King, Jack-in-the-Green?
And he needs his run, too. Thick-limbed, slow-pulsed,
his sap eases through branch and leaf, the hulk
of late middle-age, and nothing polite is left
to sacrifice. He plods—he stumps—he hefts
his trunk along. He seems half worms and wood chips
and wears the holly crown around his hips
these days. Life's hard, my mother likes to say,
still hard. Me, I like to remember them in flagrante,
woods blazing, dodder's twining orange vines
trimming their legs, white flowers, burning tines.
No comments:
Post a Comment