As Mourning Doves Persist

Cream colored telephone in its nicho . Dial tone. Rotary rolling back on itself. Hallway emptied save for the  sweep of mother  i n a wide skirt, handling Marlboros, sparking friends who listen.  Tentative between errands.  Bell that bounces back when knocked to the floor.  Sturdy stationary  cord that kinks up on itself.  More babies born.  Congratulatory calls.  Plugged into the wall,  traveling only so far.  Conduit to grandparents.  Man on the other end,  better than a tin can.  Late for dinner.  Frayed frequency.  Magic string,  superior to yoyo.  Trick to convey whispers. Last minute. Grocery list additions. No other nook but this one. Hard plastic cradle cupped to the ear. Alphabet of neighbors behind walls. Hand folded notes with five numbers. Morse code of fingernails Secrets and children’s temperatures.  Snow days and best friends. Tablets dog e...

           Banjos in the cafe. Garlic in the day's first bite.  Book on my table with only  one chapter left  to savor,  but I draw out  every last  swallow.       To photograph the room is to both shrink  and freeze the chaotic overlaps of Sunday time.  Two men seated beside me imagine aloud together,  hardly touching their food. Potatoes, avocados, single blueberry  scone.      I rol l back the foil to taste.  Fork and knife are of no use.  All fingers on the keyboard. Throat singing. Spoken word. A heart of foam on the surface of  my cup.

What does it take to clear a space where once slept a teen daughter. Her discarded tidbits still here.  Mismatched  pencils,  erasers hardened. I hear the scratch of tree limbs she told as a girl woke her at night. I sit now in this room I’m claiming for study. She could come back and claim her green felt frog, book marks, her stolen designer sunglasses resting in hard cases. Her discarded eye shadow and stubs of sage. Silver pinkie rings she took off and bottles of tincture, Singer's Saving Grace. (She's only a seven hour drive away.) I’ve scraped the stick ‘um from the closet doors, emptied the small red rolling cart of Screaming Yellow Zonkers and licorice whips. A clean slate.  A cleared place for mother writer  A narrow  stage A margin A rural  wooden  table to take and name.

The tuning can only happen if you furrow then unfreeze your face, expose your knowledge, spilling a full bowl into the room where everyone sits so quietly, swallowing all elbows easy, touching, shoulders knowing as we receive the music in his preparation Read a questioning child’s face /  And say it’s not a testament -  Peter Mayer

( an excerpt, originally for Susan ) The heart of friendship is a sturdy daisy and nub of grape  still clinging to fence. Driving coast to coast without ever leaving our chairs. A collage of significant photos. You first cut my daughter’s hair. Our families are each tattooed with grief. A bouquet  of friends on the ever cluttered table. Passive aggressive.  Taken over. A visit when least expected. My nickname spoken with your voice.  We move into new homes, counters stacked with mail.  Trees in need of water. Winter and spring. Our friendship,  a rolling cart on wheels. Recall of playing piano two by two  on a bench as a girl. As if you were always there. Looking for knives and spoons in my mother's drawers.  Vinyl on the turn table. Sitting down to sigh.

Not breeze but strong wind. The scent of coffee in this house not my home but my brother's with expanse of high ceiling and lawn of palms around the perimeter. More sun than one can stare into in this change of time, waking in my bed in a corner of the grandmother Ohana with a rectangle of perfect sky cut just above and to my left.  I am visiting an island where my brother owns a backhoe parked under a tarp. I walk past it to pick lemons. Past nameless leafy and magenta.  The coconuts on the trees are deceptively green. I presume the brown rough and sweet milk are tucked inside these coy treasure chests. Maui  matryoshka .  Flying in at night, I couldn't see anything much but dark and the highway that I guessed was running around the edge of the island, or alongside sugar cane fields, its lit lines under splintered moon. All the large and small warm houses below with their daughters of inevitable aching hearts and boys with tiny drum sets and fistfuls of leg...

1. The couple in front of me in a wooden booth scoop their lunch up between them as they speak a language other than my own. My tiny soup cup is empty. I poor sweetener into my bitter black tea. The man at the table is momentarily left alone by his petite companion and he see-saw leans away from his seat to try to follow her. A passing employee helps him to lift up and out. Two men holding hands to share balance, as if old friends and a cordial politeness arrives in that minute. 2. At work a friend is leaving to take another job. I buy a candle for her as parting gift from the café’s gift shop. I wonder what to take down from the shelf persimmon, moonlit bayberry, or sensuous narcissus.     When I return to slide into my spot, the couple is gone. Replaced with a father and a fidgety boy on all fours under the table exploring for lost rubber bands. While the man talks without attention on his cell phone. The earlier aft...