SKI LIFT

1.

I thought all I felt was annoyance, not even anger,
So many plans to change, we were in the wrong country,
On the other side of an ocean, words get changed
Coming through water, I thought, don't tell me this,
I don't want to hear it, I thought it's wrong
To tell me my father died while I'm standing
Here naked and wet, it isn't proper,
Don't you have any sense, I remember giving my mother
Black net stockings, she was always
So proud of her legs, even after the stove burned them,
I have her legs, and he said, Next you'll be standing
On street corners holding a red bag, I always wondered
Why a red bag, she gave them back to me and I wore them
Everywhere, she never wore them, and then everyone around me
Was crying, and it was like being in a wood where the trees
Swayed by wind, wept and wept, while I stood like a stick,
Motionless, dry, and it took me some time to understand
I was the wind, and the branches in this wood
Would be lashing forever, I could walk into this wood whenever
I pleased, but the weather here would never change,
And today, I remember every thing, the color of the towel,
Beige, the color of the dust of the road in the summer
In front of our house, the color of the dust that settles
All winter as the wood stove burns, it burns up a whole wood,
But it won't burn up this one, you might as well
Have been the hunter who comes with a club
And bludgeons baby seals, their bodies
Were all around me as you talked, it's not worth being
The messenger, is it, someone had to do it, and all I thought was,
There are six people coming to dinner, and my hair is still wet,
Why make up a story like this, my father fell
>From a ski lift. In Alaska, in the summer, fell through the air
And was killed, a man who wouldn't stand on a kitchen stool
But held it for my mother who searched the high shelves,
What kind of craziness is this, what kind of joke, Daddy,
This isn't funny, I see you all those years, sitting in your black
Naugahyde chair in the green living room, in that cold
Room, the thermometer turned down, Put on a sweater if you're cold,
I'm cold now, refusing to speak,
The silent treatment, behind your newspaper, for years
I couldn't read a newspaper,
I lost the world, I didn't mind, I had you. Now what?
The silent treatment again? What have I done now? How long
Will this one last? When will you speak again? I find myself
Thinking, he missed this month, but that's all right,
Nothing much happened, this is the best I can do when I try
To get it through my head, that you're gone.

2.

I wear your watch, it's like having your hand on my wrist,
I can't take it off, it announces each day, one more
To the first anniversary of your death, August 13th,
The thirteenth, the unlucky day,
You would say, Yeah, I arranged it that way, I should die
On the fourteenth when I could make an impression?
It's an ugly watch, a grey Timex, the color of steam
On the mirror of the bathroom door when my husband told me,
He knocked at the door, he said, Open the door, but not this,
He said an accident, and I thought,
Oh, in the car, you were such a dreadful driver,
But it wasn't the car, it was you, falling through air,
In Alaska, a place I don't believe in anyway, falling
Through the air! You who feared planes, heights, who grew
Out of the ground
With each step, I never saw anyone so rooted in earth,
So pressed down upon it, gravity thickened around you,
It's amazing what some people will say,
Someone said: It's really a beautiful death, isn't it,
Falling out of the sky like Icarus; at least he flew before he fell,
There are so many things to be afraid of,
But who would have thought of this, if they had locked me
In a room for days and made me guess, I'd still be there:
Heart attack, stroke, car, earthquake, but a ski lift,
In summer, in Alaska, my mother watching you fall,
Now how are we going to scour those eyes? Those blue eyes
Of hers, color of the sky in Alaska, they pulled her free
Or she would have gone, too, she never left anyone alone,
She still hasn't, I'm used to watching paper fall,
Twisting in the air, turning this way and that, settling
Without sound, but you, oh weighty presence,
Won't you change your mind, stubborn thing, do it over,
Stop bleeding, we are children forever, aren't we?

3.

At the funeral, I looked into the box, and there you were,
Wake up, it's time to get up, last call, last chance, just
Sit up, but you didn't sit up, I never
Saw skin that color, browned but greenish, brownish-yellow,
I never saw your face relaxed like that, even the furrows
Between your eyes, even the scowl was gone, your nose
Was larger, I've played with dolls, I've put them in boxes,
You don't put people in boxes and close them.

At the cemetery, the rabbi said something, I sat
In the second row, I was afraid to sit too close,
I was afraid to look up at the box, it was shiny,
It swayed there suspended from poles, hung in the air,
Swayed like a cradle, I thought, now they'll bury you,
But they didn't lower the box, it stayed there swaying,
The sun kept hitting it, I thought, it's hot in there,
We drove away in that long black car, it felt like shame,
It felt like illness, at the last instant, I looked back,
As if you were in a bed in that field, alone there,
And no one to put you to bed, no one to cover you,
The box swaying, as if you were still falling,
Alone, and no one to say good night, the sounds
Of the world still coming to you,
The sounds of our leaving, our tires on the gravel
And you forced to listen, Don't leave me here,
I thought you were saying it but I've been saying it ever since,
Don't leave me here, don't leave me here
Alone, how did I know you were safe beneath
Your blanket of earth, your borrow, what if
Someone came for your body, took it away, how do I
Know where you are?

When I stood in front of the coffin I realized
I expected to disappear, vanish, no puff of smoke,
No snaps of the fingers, but if you were gone,
I was too, would have to go, as if our existences
Were contingent, I never thought you would die
Before me, how much of this did I know
Standing in that bathroom, in my towel, naked and wet,
I remember looking at you through a crack in the door,
Naked and wet, I must have been five or six,
Probably I knew all of it, no one ever clung
To routines the way I did, my fingers
Tight around their throats, no vines ever dug in
Harder than I did, I walked on the Heath every day
He so loved the Heath, I watched the kite fliers,
The thwack, thwack, thwack of the kites against the sky,
Hard enough to split a skull but didn't shatter,
Didn't shatter the earth either, left no mark,
Boneless things, and then I was up in the air again,
Over the ocean, flying home. Where was home now?

Who will I talk to now? Who is left in the world
Who looks like me?

4.

All the photos of your trip are full of shadows.
I framed one. The shadow of a small plane's wing
Lies behind you; you are looking up through a black arch.
In another, gold light eats at you, glare from a window
Dissolves you. In another, you are small, as if photographed
From a plane leaving you behind. I know if you had come back
Safe, I wouldn't have looked twice, the shadows, the black
Door, you standing there, small, alone, I can almost see
You waving, I wouldn't have thought twice, now they predict,
Tell a story, prophecy the future, if we could have known,
One way or another the future is always dark, undeveloped,
But there's plenty of time to think about it now, all the time
Left in the world, now you are immortal in my mind
But that's no comfort, I'm not solid, I might as well
Be painted on glass,
I remember staying home with you
Listening to the radio and you let me stay up all night,
That's what you said, and I believed it, I was too young
To tell time, later I knew you'd lied about the hour,
But we stay someone's child forever,
And you could change time, stop it, add to it,
Turn it forward, back, it was your property, you owned it
Like this watch. Come back, but you won't,
I know it, not even in dreams. No one ever does,
No curtain calls for this family's stubborn mules.
Gone is gone. I don't believe it but I will.
So people say.