Last, and: Pears

Last

At dusk the streetlightsstand like beacons to the underworld,a girl runs toward me beaded with rainand sweat. I think husk, wheels—seeds rattle, shake loose and a candleis held to the egg's red mass she istoo young to see. In Pompeii those bodiesare not bodies but plaster pouredinto the cavity where a body once lay,no less a hand pushing back ash,no less a woman with her unborn childtwisting for a pocket of air,the forge, the fire, the glimpsed blade,a door we close quickly, just as my brothersaid, Now I know I will die and I thoughtof course and not me in the same second.We kept driving, arrived at the airportand the next day our father did die—aria, the birds rising at the soundof the explosion and plums, succulentashy, burnished. Walking down the SpanishSteps on a Sunday morning in October,no one there yet, Keats's window open,you said Ten or fifteen years from nowwhen I am gone, come back. You touchedour absence from each other,the fifteen years ahead you've always had—when in dreams I am older and youremain as you were when we first metbefore devotion was returned,or was it that I let it be—our lives togethersuddenly recognizable asif seared pagesfallen from a larger book.

Pears

I lie down with the last lightwatching the robin who takes it inon the highest dead branch. I lie downand I am not diminished, it does nothurt me. The pears are still hangingby their thread of stem, growing heavierday by day and in the morningsthe robin sways with them, feastingbefore they fall, nothing having lovedthem but the robin and the robinis enough. These days my mothergathers her small lists by fistfuls—there are things she needs to tell me.Every day there is more. Everythingis yellow, the last light, the leaves,the meadowlark landing on the wire.

Born in this month, sometimes I thinkI was born loving disintegration—the fieldsreceding, vines and husks ploughed under,this last offering of pears or whenI was a child the peaches on the low brancheshanging over the fence, unpicked, falling,covered with flies. Now the lightis dimmer, smoky as bar light,or something rubbed tenderly, the copperbottom of a pan that won't shineand I see the girl sitting across from me,cupping her elbow, streaked yellow then blue,how I finally understood she was telling methat hurting enough is its own meaning. I'dalmost forgotten the bruised flesh wornlike a badge you hope another will see,and having seen, catch you before the next fall.