Trans

Summer

Summer - forAaron This morning, up at six, waiting for the flat white tablet embossed with a bone to settle in my belly,I take up sharp scissors and on clogs enter the raised beds to clip off dead ordyingflowers- various shades ofdeep purple some with yellowthroats, some lavendersports to gather a few full blossoms for the test tube vase you bought me for my decadebirthday. The light flat against the old railroad ties holding hard against earth, heavy clayoverlaid with wood chips ... Somewhere under the chenille robe, behind the long zipper and the scars, is the young girl packing for camp. White shorts and Ts for the Sabbath, candlelight to welcome a day of rest - reading on bunks, bare feet rubbing the scratchywool blankets. What does that girl know about dying or illness, AIDS, the cancer in the brain?How, as she lifts the toad free of pond moss, hot fingers carefully moving over the smooth skin, to thumb a wedge against the cool suck, can she touch her power to watch over the world, live here touching tenderlywith passion, teach the scarred woman sitting in early light deadheading the flowers, teach her to watch? Surely I didn't intend to confront anything more this season of planting than the hired work I do- reading manuscript 61 texts for Longman, diddling through writing a book with mytranssexual son, in good company, filling the patio pots. Mytragedies already suffered, transformed, and put between covers. Better the inquiryinto the nature of ticks their habits, their prodigious swelling without bursting, bodies thick with life, scurrying, detached without host, to another. 62 ...