Caesura

My knee was sore this afternoon. I took a painkiller, looked down at my ruined garden (too much rain. a collapsed garden, really) and slumped into a really-hot bath.

In the bath lately, I've been reading bits and pieces of the 2007 mortality themed Caesura journal.

This time I was really moved by two poems.

In the first, "My Mother's Clock," by Ellen Bass, the speaker's listening to a clock in the hospital room in which her mother lies dying. Here's roughly the 2nd half of this poem:

"I cannot help but think the volume's
increasing, as if to call attention
to the passage of time,
as if each moment were being
announced the way elegant guests
are heralded at balls in English
novels: the Duke and Duchess
of This, the Earl and Lady of That.
Each second a grand couple
arriving at the palace of her life.
Soon the company
will fill the hall, waltzing
in their black tuxedos, their twilit
gowns twirling under the candelabra.
And the great doors close."


I found the 2nd poem, John Bradley's "Story with Blue and Green," in a review of the book in which it appears: Terrestrial Music.


"He saw it, watched it as it got bigger, watched as it came nearer, the falling bomb taking on the shape of a falling bomb. His legs knew what to do. Crayon blue and crayon green, they moved through the blue green field. With each step he was more sure that he could do it. He stretched his arms out to catch it, the way he would catch a baby, falling out of the sky."


O, my poor garden: I will bring you
back to life!!