Poem: Mountain Cardinal
Sometimes I wonder what it was like to be you that night, swallowed in your recliner, visitors peering into your bubble like a goldfish in a glass bowl. They had taken your teeth. When I embraced you, you were cold and soft and I did not recognize your voice. You told me about the banana split that you shared with my mother at the top of the hill. You said that you wanted another, for teeth are not necessary to enjoy sweet cream. This was before your blood became poison and before we drove, entranced, nine hours through city and sunset cornfield, praying that we’d make it. Pennsylvania is a storybook this time of year. The day before, you had told me that I was a beautiful granddaughter, and then I knew. I still hear the tick, tick, tick of the hazards in my father’s Subaru as we crept through town, population two thousand, led to the tomb like ducks behind a long, steely mother. And I wondered how it felt to be my mother, to soothe you through the rattle, to lay a red rose on your recliner, to say “thank you for coming” to uncle and cousin and friend. To hold a cold hand that doesn’t hold back. She tells me that you visit her still, as a mountain cardinal. She says that you always let her catch a glimpse before you stretch your wings, take to the sky.