Ponytailed and bleeding
blackly. My body, it seems,
is still game. I catch myself
scowling in the backyard that
is now only mine.
I crunch through melting snow
and mush through mustardy,
smeared logs of manure.
Is it manure if it comes
out of a dog?
He might as well be
a Clydesdale. The big dog’s
robust expulsions are
comedic in size.
Scatology pleases me.
I don’t think you
found his output funny.
So much crap to step in.
Missteps, we now know, are
too simple.
Is the big dog on your list? Of
all the things you are not
unhappy to lose?
I am assuming
we are nearing
the end of the end.
Forgive me for my persistence.
Like the big dog,
I must turn in my endless circles
snuffling and pawing
pausing to look for true north
or true south
until I can lie down.
And even then the truth
rubs my undersides raw.
Since you are not listening
and I believe I am on your list
you should know or not know
(as you like)
that I wanted to find the words
on Christmas Day.
I tried to tell you.
Simply tell, ask. I was not
swatting with a branch
of thorns, nettles.
It was an olive branch
I offered. Can you sketch
that from memory?
I tried because
(tedious!)
I thought we were
better, braver, bolder.
(tedious!)
After all,
(it’s always after all)
what is art? What is theatre?
Did we learn so little from the
lives and passions and torment
we professed to understand,
to portray?
I am in mourning for my life!
Pass the popcorn? Never!
How we had spoken,
once. If only they understood
themselves better, these characters!
How we had once swooned, drunk on
their unnecessary torment. If only
Chekhov’s characters could simply see!
Ah, but then, there would
be no Chekhov.
I forgot nothing, Love. I merely
wanted the real children
to have shoes. I was desperate
for Moscow.
The ache the spinning the sick
in my head became something
unspeakable.
I wanted to but
could not say:
Help me, help me, Moscow is
not coming and I will not rest.
Reach for me. I do not want
to be lost. And the rats!
Take no further offense to this:
I truly thought we might
be the people you
hear about sometimes, the
ones who roll up
their shirtsleeves,
the ones who pull on their boots
and find diamonds and reunion
in the muck.
The reality is ugly, yes.
I do not deny it.
I spun and fell with
what I told you
I was sure I wanted.
I do not deny it.
But the reality is less ugly
than your assumptions.
Let us talk. I bore you
children. I was good
to you. If we could only—
What? Certainly. Of course.
You are not listening. There
are two empty wineglasses
in your sink.
I will shut my mouth. I will
care for what has been
left behind.
Know this: I kept your grill
covered properly all winter,
untouched by the wet snow
that has left everything
else in this backyard
landscape changed,
sodden.
Now I assign each clump
of manure a name
as I pick it up
and hurl it into the woods
with the black-fanged pooper-scooper.
You. Her. Him. Them.
My assumptions were
different from yours.
I assumed others would
help us fight for us.
You know I have gone so far
as to beg. So be it.
I am in mourning for my life.
Masha, where are my petticoats?
And you, you!
Where is your top hat
and suit?
And my embroidered handkerchief—
the pink cursive J—
still tucked in your sleeve?
Apparently getting involved
in domestic messes like ours
is unfashionable, out of style.
Chekhov would have been
out of work. Even Rent-a-Yenta
is out of business. So modern
this world is.
I have never been one
to keep up with the latest
trends. Which is why I am
here, alone, clomping around
this soupyard in tall shit-encrusted
pink winter boots, years old.
No worries, we’ve got the
dissolution of our marriage
covered, thanks, all!
Hello, March.
You were with me when we
(then, a we) bought these boots
in Calgary, for our trip to Banff.
I had to have pink. Of course.
You were always kind about my
absurd penchant for the color.
I cannot wear these laughable boots
without thinking of you, and
a family that used to be mine,
a city and a landscape it seems
I may not see again.
As I work at this thawing,
miserable earth,
I feel the need to claim some
territory.
All of Canada is yours.
The United States of America, mine.
The mill, yours, of course.
This house, mine.
Albany, yours. Theatre, yours, I suppose.
For now. And…let’s see.
I was an Art major, and yet.
You seem to have won that one.
Remember please that I wanted you
to win. Someday, remember.
New York City, a coin-toss. Tails.
Nope, yours. Enjoy the pelmeni.
Greenfield, always mine, because
of my grandmother, but now
I swallow hard. Your Valentine’s gift
to me, intended or not.
The shed behind the house. Ah, mine.
I struggle with the doors.
Busted. The roof is falling
off. Exceedingly civilized skunks are
living underneath.
A rainshower of mouse droppings
when I get the door open. My pink boots
reek of shit. The rakes are out of
reach. I kick savagely at everything,
because it is you I want.
I want to stand on what used
to be our street and beg strangers
to thaw the shed,
thaw the yard,
thaw you,
thaw me.
Take it all, I want to tell them—
any lawn chair you’ve sat on,
your barbecue grill, the weed whacker
that irritated you
with its edgy, unpredictable ways.
Instead, I work slowly toward my
destination. I brave the
mouse manure and reach
reach reach for the
stiff red rake.
With the rake I hack and claw
at the uneven ground, mixing
white, yellow, brown, black.
The yard is veined thickly
with tree roots,
a terrain of twisted, elderly hands.
I once said to you that the only
acceptable way to die would be us,
side by side,
fingers entwined.
Do you—
Never mind.
The ground is almost equal parts
mud, melting ice, and
excrement. Not for the faint
of heart or foot. As I rake
slimy leaves and cakes of dog
patties to the perimeter of the yard,
I finally quit my mincing, my
sidestepping. I walk where I must.
I tighten my grip
on the red rake.
I think of your long fingers,
fingers I think both daughters
have inherited.
We are two signatures
away or away from
those daughters no longer
remembering us together.
Will your long fingers
tremble when the pen is
yours to take? I will
not sign first. I eat too
fast, I am too impatient.
If I am going to learn,
the lesson will be this.
A chuffing noise from
the back door. My hands shake
on the rake. I think of your hands,
painting plums and pears
on the back porch.
The porch is
now filled with cardboard
boxes, old TVs, air conditioners
and two panting dogs longing
for March manure and strange air
to get lost in.
You and I lost our way.
You would say it was my way
to lose.
But are you above this? Above us,
above hands once clasped in
autumn light, wrists bound
with worn leashes?
Above hands that have
already grown unfamiliar,
these once-sure four hands,
someday passing a new
grandchild across a couch?
Oh dear.
Sentiment, useless sentiment.
You are having none of this.
There is nothing to do but plod on,
pick up poop, hurl it into the trees,
frighten squirrels.
There is nothing to do but break the ice,
pick up pine twigs, listen to a woodpecker
overhead. Was it you who once told me
the sound of a woodpecker was a sure sign
of a dead tree?
There is our neighbor, fetching
her laundry on the line
before the freeze again
tonight. She looks up the hill
over the fence and comes to
greet me. It is nice to be seen.
It’s too early to rake,
our, no, my neighbor tells me.
I tell her I am doing
it because of the quick thaw.
Because it will freeze again tonight.
She eyes me uncertainly but warmly.
I have not answered her question,
not truly.
‘It just feels like
the right thing to do,’
I call down to her yard.
She nods. ‘One day at a time,’
she calls up to me.
‘One day at a time,’
I repeat, dutifully.
Some birds will answer
any call.
Some birds will
call until they hear
an answer.
Never mind
if it doesn’t come.
Some birds must call.
There is work to
be done. After all.
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