Dahlia, and Wisdom, and My Father

Dahlia

When sometimes my deadones visit me in dreams, I hearbut do not see them,like the parakeet repeatingits name each morning beneaththe floral cover of its cagein the warbled Rs ofmy grandmother's brogue.My therapist says I learnedto take comfort in languagefrom an early age. Conversely,I may have been sensitizedto verbal rather than visualcues. Mostly my dead vocalizemy name, or pieces of it,as if I were meant tobuild from its syllables someonewho is without them nowand will someday no longer bein need of a name. Prettybird, Pretty bird. A Novemberdahlia auto-filling the horizonwith its petals at sunrise.

Wisdom

How often can you passa photo of your familythinking,These faces look familiar,and not find yourselfridiculous.

I sized the priceyhandmade paper I'd beensaving, the onewith gold detail, to matthe picture, too old to fitanything store-

bought; my motherbarely a teenager,her mother maybethirty-five. I'd guessthey're in the Catskills,a vacation

favorite in the '40swith the Irish, a jokein the '80s,desirable again today.For oncethey look not-angry:

Nana proud,Mom her belovedand loving child.In this they are and are notthemselves,as I was

when they lived,believing myself,as children will,the focus of their everythought.They fought

so long and hardabove meI half-expected Solomonto wisely intervene;if he ordered me

split, they'd haveto quit.Not a singlephoto of the three of us exists.

My Father

raked leaves into stacks much taller than Iand let me leap into every onelike bursting the suninto pieces: the scrape of his rake,the way leaves cushioned and cut,their old book smell. A word can't gildthe spangle of his ungloved hand,either my laugh or his,more than it already was—it waswhat we understood of lovethat brought me up in the tumult.