The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005

In C.W.’s Closet

33 in c.W.’S cloSet I clmb the C scale on the old pano. On the thrd finger, I forget the crossover step lke a man forgets a kss. You chuckle, rupture the stllness of Indan Pond, hustle over to the wndow, look out over the blueberry field you knew as a chld. Then you turn gracefully as someone sxty years younger wth the gray har blond, the brttle frame full wth flesh. You turn and beckon me to your closet, to the past. In the personal closet your father stands n photographs where you toddle along, you and Elzabeth at the end of the Glded Age. She has her gumpton, you your wllngness to obey the root of the law over our tanted bodes, the blossom of the law over our souls. Your father stands n hs rebuke of DuBos, the black rabble-rouser, after the Nagara Falls conventon. Dsparate fingers were called together before I settled nto your doman, a heavy brd wth nchoate wngs. You pull back and sgh, eye me wth the deadlocked desperaton we sng when we know the flower must wther, the stone must crumble, the frend must go. We unlock from our fixed gaze on your father n hs belef n segregaton. We move together nto the ktchen, young and old, 34 black and whte, poor and rch. Our bodes are so close they pattern a rhythm above the evenng news wth Tom Brokaw, above the world as t wanes, moans. Our breath mngles wth the nght. ...