Mother Wind, and: Death Invented for Us

Mother Wind

Once I walked out and the worldtook me into the wind.

The wind took me into the air,my feet were on the ground,

but I was in the air, in the air,between the world and the world,

the trees bent, the sycamores, crabapples, small cedars, the large

cedars and firs and bushes, the boxeson curbs were tossed, the street

filled with garbage, glass, whiskylabels, and wine bottles smashed.

Once I walked out and the worldheld me in its air, as a doctor

slid a scope down my mother'sthroat to see where she was bleeding,

her throat banded twice before,and now nothing could hold as I walked out

into the wind-world all wrapped.Next day, I drove my sister two hours

south—a sunny Sunday, no trafficwhen there is usually traffic.

In the room, her round bodyin the same room as my body,

smaller now, aged beyond her age,hair thin, she was there, breath regular

but pinched, her lungs cuppinga palmful of blood. A man I didn't know

said a prayer; I saw drops drip off my noseand to the floor at which I stared.

The man hugged me. Said—I love you.They took her off of all support.

She never opened her eyes. Lifted her headwhen I spoke, but not after

the morphine. And her gaspymetronome beat for eighteen hours.

When the breathing stopped,nurses felt for her heart for two minutes,

then opened her eye with their fingersand aimed a light at that brown circle I knew

that stared straight at me. And like so many things,I no longer had a mother.

Her scarred liver backed up all the blood.Once I walked out in the world,

and the wind mother-wrappedaround my walking body, on the small path

in the acres behind my home.Once I walked out and the world

did not show me the young bearthat lived on this low hill

for a full summer, sneaking downto eat backyard chickens.

I once walked and the world didn't wantme, the wind, nor trees, nor trash, but Lao Tzu

was wrong, all things in naturedo not work silently, they are loud—

they are the mother-gasp; I've walked outinto windsound, every rush and brush

and tap and tremor of branch a brother—and dirt shift and scuffle, noisy—

I held her hand, her liver swollen and fatty,and I felt Lao Tzu's second thought

everything fulfills their functions and makes no claim—I walked out and the world made no claim.

Death Invented for Us

She hid bottles in every room of the top storyof her house, even though she lived alonefor thirteen years. Thirty-three empties

in closets, drawers, on top of sobrietybooks and pictures of my grandfather.She did not go the way her sister went:

driving toward her family Christmas eve,her heart giving its kinetic heat and finalheave through the miles of veins, a freeway

of self, until parking in the E-Z Mart lotto be found by strangers who could seeshe was not asleep. For us alone, Milton

says, was death invented, and binds uswith after-bands. I walk out so someonecan wash her feet, straighten her legs, prep

her eyes for donation. I could not kiss her eyes.The last time I saw my mother, I said I know,sunk on the couch not facing the broad window.

No she said. A deer ate the rose by the back door,and went on living. I know, I said, and she leftfor the spare room, my child dropped a block

through the maze of a giraffe's neck over and overagain to hear the tinny song. She leftfor the bedroom, the office, I know, I know, walking

as if pulled by bright thread to the file cabinet, no,I know, I said, I know, I know, I know both the...