North Chop

I marvel at the slow moving swirls of cigarette smoke

that she has engulfed us in

like cartoon lassos

unable to harness anything solid

dissolving on impact

The cuckoo clock breaks the trance

charming us both

with its ridiculous insistence on five o’clock

fifteen minutes into cocktail hour

I have tap water

she has bourbon

Forever adjusting her placemat and her lighter

and the folded napkin under her drink,

and the pencils, like soldiers sharpened and ready,

get a jostle just because

and her slim black watchband is twisted into place by two degrees

edges pressed into alignment

crumbs brushed away

her hands always busy,

though her body was still.

The holes in the rug under her chair

expressed clearly where she spent her time

The Matriarch on her wooden throne

with the inflatable ring as a cushion

all of her reference books at arm’s length

definitions accessible.

The scents of Emeraude, Breck, and Binaca

are still tickets on a bullet train to the past for me

She squints out at the stirring fall weather

then walks over to the barometer mounted on the wall,

somehow elegant in her torn Keds,

and taps it hard

as if to rouse someone inside.

When the reading appeals to her sense of accuracy

she nods her approval

On her way back she stops in front of the picture window

to look out at the choppy sound

and check on The Vineyard

and the sea grass and the jetty and the sky.

Then her attention turns to the potted plants that line the table below

and she plucks ruthlessly at any dead bits

the apothos and african violets seem to like it

The baby’s wooden cradle

now holds firewood and newspapers

and as she passes the fireplace

it gets a stab with one of her iron pokers

the log complains as it drops a bit

shedding ash and spark

She would pack me peanut butter, jelly and pickle sandwiches

for my only child adventures in the yard

creating a deep obsession with dill and brine.

I would take a rusted fishing rod from the shed

thrilled by the danger of the hooks

and an old tackle box

and settle under the leaves of the Russian olive tree

as I lost myself in the make believe life

of an old, white haired fisherman

I would walk by her window

on the way to my job on the water

certain she could see my bent back

and beard

as if we shared a mind

And a few years later I cried in the sand

as I read the last pages of Death Be Not Proud

a book she shared with me

when I was still so young

I think to let me know what it had been for her

to lose a child to cancer

easier to communicate these things in literary terms

And when my greatest fears were realized

and she was on her way

only a phone to connect us over 3,500 miles

I could hear her air starved voice

“Can you sing me an opera?” I joked darkly

“Rigoletto or Aida?” she quipped back immediately