Did some indulgent, rodent grandparent,
with patience, show the way
to race across the snow and climb the pole
and make the jump and hang there upside down,
and grasp one black shell (while the feeder spins around)
and split and spit the shell to drop below
as he consumes or stores the seed and stares at me?

Or is it not a patient thing at all
but only some strong, urgent force takes hold
and makes the young one bold enough to face
in foolish confidence
whatever risk might lie ahead
in the space between
his greed and quaking fear?

And why do I, on my side the glass,
wonder whether I should be afraid?

My neighbor and I still hang out our wash,
(I, each Thursday, taking my chances.
She, according to weather forecasts, I think,
or maybe by what she feels in her bones).
We laugh at StarTribune's report of some suburban bans
against clotheslines.
We wonder out loud whose tomatoes will first turn red,
and whether cucumbers will make it at all;
this year, it's been too cool and dry
for normal progress to the fall.

Tenacious dandelions, spread as stars across green-earth skies,
drive in spike-like roots, take hold of earth, and won't let go.
Kids squeeze bunches of stems in tight fists
that will open only to release the buttery bouquet to Mom
who hurries to put them in water, in a crystal vase,
wondering how soon she might mourn both flower and child.

While hanging bright, white unmentionables (some somewhat tattered)
on our clothesline, I, unembarrassed, remember my mother:
   with one clothespin held in her mouth
   and half a dozen more in her apron pocket,
   (thus needing not to walk over and over again
   the east-west path to the back door  
   where full supply of pins hangs on the ****)
   she does her woman's task with flair,
   spacing each garment so as not to block the sun or air.

You'd think she'd held some tool to calculate
where the sheet would best allow the breeze to circulate
or where to place each pillow case and sock,
so each would recognize and meet their mates!
And I know she theorized regarding how to hang those socks,
always with the toe pointed upward, so as not to show,
when dried and worn, a crease or ever-so-slight evidence
of the pin's pressure displayed for all to see
on the exposed ankle,
as if that might be a matter
worthy of shame.

Dropping clean clothes from the dryer onto the bed,
recalling how she had often held them close
as if to save some sacred store of warmth,
I am softly surprised by memory today.
The warmth, like life itself,
proves Scripture true:
a mist appears a little time,
then vanishes as morning dew.

Rabbits forgot the spot
this time around, I guess.
Or maybe they found some finer plot
offering rarer and larger fare
than the crocuses--
the tiny kind, almost lost to sight,
poking through soil and leaves,
exposing green and purple--
the deep, dark shades of colors
that Janice loved.
I stopped there, on this post-Easter Tuesday.
She loved them all:
   rabbits, forgetful or not;
   crocuses, tiny, with shaded hues;
   looming cross, empty tomb,
   and me.

Lines composed coming home from Florida,
Janice and I, in March, 2001,
beginning with an EASTER acrostic:

Expectations,
Aspirations,
Sorrows,
Tests,
Endurances,­
Remembered now,

we speed North, up I-75.

     "Do we have time to go to Milledgeville?"
      I ask.

     "Since we may never come this way again,
     let's spend the hours, and not be sorry when
     some task looms higher than this hill ahead,"
     I hear her say.

And so we go and find our way
through town and past the "Private Residence"
to the blossomed gravesite, fenced and locked,
as if to warn that night, like some grotesque character,
will overtake us, too;
and Flannery O'Connor, nowhere in sight,
seems still to speak of life and essence,
although nothing rises to converge.

     "Well, it was worth it,"
     I declare,
     some miles on the road.
    
     "We'd always have been sorry,"
     I hear her reassure,
     "if we had not stopped,
     and then, for ever after
     thought we had missed some Revelation."

So I drive on and speed right through Atlanta,
remembering a moment of grace.

"Don't forget your hanky," Mom said
almost eighty years ago
as I went out the door,
and I think that's why
I keep a generous supply
clean and folded square
along with socks and underwear
in my middle dresser drawer.
When my brother Clifford died,
Mary Jo gave me an unopened pack
that Cliff had kept who knows how long.
I'm guessing a reminder
had sounded in his head, too,
so, having taken heed,
neither he nor I would be caught
unprepared.
Often enough a nose bleed
or a seasonal sneeze
would not be blocked
by paper tissue.
More lately, at weddings
when the couple vows . . .
"in sickness or in health,
for better or for worse,"
folded cloth absorbs my sobs.
Most often now, it's at memorials
whether for youth or aged alike
that I check my pocket
hoping to find that a hanky is there.
Tonight, though, cries of laughter arise
in surprise, with no need to be stifled,
but sputtering, slobbering
Great Grand Kids
find perchance most sacred use
for a hanky that catches it all.

Facebook's faces, sometimes as strong as words on the wall,
or in Xanga's blogs, or in now-old email messages,
serve as evocateurs
that summon more than one could think was stored
in tangled strands beneath the cortex.

That vault, in fact, proves not to be protected space
or cerecloth meant to hold or hide some hallowed hopes
that I had thought were now impervious,
reserved apart from further, subtle, deeper text,
not subject here to parse or vivisect.

From vantage point of age, perchance
one sees that those faces smiling over progeny,
or cyber-lighted eyes peering out in brightness,
mask sober-tinged realities
expressed ever so casually in the orderly syntax
displayed on my wall or my blog or my mail.

His tanned, stocky fingers cupped a rose,
turning it toward the camera,
and I clicked the shutter.
He hoped only that the rose
should somehow be preserved.
I cared mostly that I might keep
the image of his strong, gentle hand.
Every day, except Sunday,
he gripped hammer and plane and saw and sander,
but here in the back yard,
before the day was gone,
he held a flower,
just so,
to catch the sun's rays,
as if to grant extended light
to this one bit of life,
and to me.

And I, sixty summers later,
repeat his act, feeling
so much less manly
--my own hand being mostly unfamiliar
with the grip of tools or boards.
Still, since comparisons will be made,
when it comes to hopes and cares
as to what gets preserved of light or life,
it seems that little changes.

We padded the smooth vinyl chair with a pillow.
Still, the wheels rolling over cracked sidewalks
(carefully avoided as kids, so as not to break
our mother's back)
now countered hoped-for benefit or comfort.
Jarring impact traveled up the steel frame,
found quick route mapped to weakness,
directed by some skilled marksman
to reach the target with precision,
proving to be the sharper force
than all our pillow gentleness
on this, her almost final
April ride.