Sarah Russell
ReunionFor fifty years
she wrote to Yolanda in foreign prose, sharing secrets as she once did walking home from school. Argentina and girlhood a lifetime ago. Reality: three kids, then grandkids, a troubled husband, an aging mother, an Arkansas farm. Yet every letter promised that someday she'd return. Now they are on the tarmac in Mendoza, stooped, with the uncertain step of age. Words catch in their throats as their hands caress the other's cheeks, wipe away the other's tears, and their eyes see only the girls they were – their secrets safe. Greece, 1992
I had a new camera –
a Nikon with filters and ten rolls of film. I fancied myself an artiste abroad, judging optimal angles, light source, shutter speed. I fell in love with doors – the heavy, textured wood in fading blues and reds, ornate locks and hinges forged of iron, sometimes with geraniums, a bucket, or a broom of twigs nearby. I almost missed her standing near the church – one with twelve-foot, hand carved doors, sunlight catching in the bas relief of saints and sinners. Tiny, wizened, hunched, she stood sentry in her widow's black, face convulsed in sorrow like Christ on the cross. Her trembling palm pleaded silently for alms. She would cross herself in reverence if a coin were tossed her way. What a picture, I thought. Wow. The quintessential portrait of supplication. I saw her as the centerpiece in my array of doors – ancient portals, ancient figure, ancient land. I approached her, showed my camera, offered what I deemed a tempting sum. She took the coins and blessed my venture. I set the aperture and tried to frame the shot, but my Beggar of Greece had disappeared. In her place I saw a woman, dressed the same but taller, smiling, brushing a wisp of hair from her face, smoothing her skirts, fussing with her sweater so the tatters wouldn't show. Dammit, I thought. That's not what I want. But I politely snapped the pose, nodded thanks, and went back to filming doors. Turns out my well-planned "doors as art" looked dumb when I got home – like plain old doors. Instead, framed on my dresser is an elderly Greek widow – dignified, delighted that I'd pay a hundred drachmas to take her picture. Requital
For fifty years mother’s face reflected
a marriage she endured, a man she didn’t love. But when he was blind and frail in hospice, she visited him often, and when he reached out, groping for her hand, she would smile and move it (again and again) just out of reach. |
PrismHoney-thighed surf children
chase the ebb, bare feet etching pockmarked sand. Another surge, crashing, scrambling, feardelighted squeals, tumbling water bubbles/babies catching sun beams. Scientists see tides and wind tug at eternity, the vast liquidity of earth. Poets find analogy: cosmic force pursuing, crushing fragile human frames and timid hearts, while sun-kissed fledglings' merriment is incidental, drily pondered – this ecstasy of splashing play. Renaissance
The robin sings at first light,
announcing new life in the old pine. Below, sheltered by scruffs of willow a fox kit blinks at sunrise from his den. The barn cat’s manger nursery has sweet hay. Fields glow nascent green, and orchards burst white promises of harvest. Mortals, blind with logic, claim January starts the year, while Nature shakes her lovely head and smiles, knowing it begins in April. The Day Fred Died
he asked us to sing The Teddy Bears Picnic.
Fred couldn't sing anymore. Pneumocystis and radiation had scarred his throat and lungs. “I'm waiting for the swallows to come back," he croaked, “you know, like Capistrano.” If you go out in the woods today you'd better go in disguise . . . We reminisced about growing up in the 50s with Saturday morning's treat after chores – the Big John and Sparky radio show, its teddy bear theme song, and Sparky's impossible adventures. Sparky the elf, like Fred, wanted (more than anything) to be a real boy. At six o'clock their mommies and daddies will take them home to bed . . . we sang as he drifted into a final morphine sleep – the man who raised enviable tomatoes, wore cowboy boots, gave huge, enthusiastic hugs, loved ribald jokes and trimming the tree at Christmas because they're tired little teddy bears. Dying
There’s a slow awakening to death.
In youth, it’s a solar eclipse you didn’t expect. You look away. Fear blindness. At midlife you make the cardboard pinhole shield, warding off the glare and the blackness at the core. Finally, when they’re commonplace – after two, then three, then four, you turn and stare them down with your bags packed. |
