It is too late now for more than
nipping at things left undone;
dipping and bobbing at life's
last temptations, and hearing
doors close even before the next
has been pushed open.
Everything is coming at a rush -
the food trays, the check-ups,
the check-outs, the thinning hair,
and the start of sentences forgotten
before the end is uttered.
A few sepia images come through
from the past that draw us still
together -
Ouselves each end of an English
baby-carriage, facing, toes touching;
the phot of our father in full
swim-suit, covered shoulder to thigh,
(God forbid we see in between)
kneeling on the beach, his arms
around each small daughter,
freckled and mischievous;
Again ourselves in Shirley Temple outfits,
the dresses green polka dots on white,
the coats in green to match
with short puffed sleeves revealing
our bare bramble-scratched arms;
and another of us standing shyly
in our large kitchen receiving
each a Timothy and Johnny knitted doll
made by our cleaning lady, Isabella-Matilda.
Ouselves expecting to be given the world,
yet abashed when love comes in this knitted form.
And later, at college, two young women,
bodies barely restrained in summer cottons
each an arm around a Canadian student,
exotic with her accent and her Kleenex box.
Later she would draw me across the ocean and
make solid the split that our marriages
indicated, for there you are with your
first husband your feet in the wavelets
and myself nowhere to be seen.
It was marriage and children and many years
before we shared another photograph,
then profiles facing, your hair tamed
by money and sophistication,
mine still tangled in gipsy-ways and wildness;
you still Jaeger, me still Value Village,
reaching strands across a gaping divide.
Strands recalling shared womb, shared
baby-carriage and shared childhood.
Slender strands but still strong...
binding our linked flesh.
"Did it really happen?" I ask,
when some days there is just my life
alone, ocean and continent apart
and I can barely remember our face.