Made in Detroit (3 page)

and out of rubble into some venue

of light, of warmth, of dignity, into

whatever peace they imagine. Out

of ruins eerie in their torn decay

where people lived, worked, dreamed

something yet begins to rise and grow.

My junior year of college I played

a record of Archy and Mehitabel

dozens of times. I knew all

the alley cat’s lyrics. I was sure

I was her, poor, ill dressed

in a crowd of cashmere virgins

already had several lovers, a self

administered abortion, working

three jobs to stay in school, a poet

no one but myself took seriously.

Poets weren’t street sluts from Detroit.

I dressed all in black, turtleneck,

black jeans, heavy eye makeup.

Black doesn’t show dirt. Not

infrequently I was hungry. No

winter coat so I shook in the wind

like a tree stripped of leaves. I drank

whiskey as poets were supposed to.

While good girls were locked in dorm

rooms, I wandered, partied, got laid.

I expected little but trouble. Yet

I wrote and began to win prizes.

I still expected to die young, poor

and unmourned, but with a grin,

a wry joke, in love with lady irony.

I’m middle class now and loved

in a funky house I own with money

from writing I saved to buy. I take

in cats. I drink good wine and my

own cooking. I’m still surprised.

Oh mother running an old vacuum

back and forth on a threadbare rug

while my retired father supervised—

if you had the wings of the robins,

jays and cardinals you fed daily

out of the window you’d have flown

to some garden of peach trees

and peonies, a garden of roses

and tomatoes red as lipstick:

a garden where you could sit

on cushions and cats would circle

your feet purring your Hebrew name.

Oh mother your ashes feed

wisteria rampant as your dreams

that withered to salt on your pillow.

You dreamed of love that would

bathe you in radiance and got

the lye of contempt in your throat.

Who ever looked past the faded

housedresses limp on your breasts

to the child still hungering within?

That hunger haunts me staring

from eyes of women in the subway,

women in the unemployment office

women cowering under a rain of fire,

women bruised in emergency rooms.

You are my first muse. Your pain

is my ink. I am the daughter

of your fierce lonely cry: poverty

of respect, of love, of hope.

How long do we mourn our mothers?

Unfinished business. Unspoken

sentences that burn on the night.

Tangled thickets of stymied

love. Steps worn smooth

with scrubbing, never to be

climbed again.

We mourn our mothers till

we ourselves are out

of breath. That umbilical

cord between us, never

really cut no matter how

hard we tried in adolescence

to sever it.

Once there was warm

milk in a sweet stream

Once there was a brush

stroking through my long

hair. Once there was a lap.

Once there was a slap.

Shards of glass.

Will anyone ever come

as close or push as

hard? As we age we

see your face mirrored.

Your diseases weaken

us. Your silences haunt,

your stories echo.

We feared becoming our

mothers yet when we were

not you, we felt guilty.

You made us even when

you hated the results

for you opened your fists

and off we flew.

I put my mother into the garden

I put my father into the sea.

Without her he complained of the fish,

the cold salt water too rough.

Without him she became

a climbing rose and rushed

up the arbor, twining, bursting

into lush pink perfumed bloom.

Gradually he swept out toward

tankers, container vessels,

a passing destroyer. He liked

their engines. He understood

engines. Women were too

emotional. He had to scare them

quiet, but ships had a purpose.

When my cats died, she welcomed

them into her bed. When I

picked her roses, she crooned

to me.
I don’t need lullabies
,

I said.
Everybody nowadays

needs more sleep
, she whispered.

I sleep much better here
.

Snow turns the garden white

as soap powder with blue shadows

striping the abraded furrows.

Even the pebbles in the drive

glint with ice, but inside bent

over an old coffeetable dragged

from the shed, we peruse out loud

seed catalogs, debate inflated

verbiage on tomatoes, peppers,

lettuce. What glorious photos

of polished perfect eggplants,

of even orthodontist rows

of corn kernels like model’s teeth.

Everything is super early, tasty

and resistant to all plagues

known to the studious gardener.

Surely we’ll be buried in squash.

No cuke beetles will nibble on us.

Our harvests are blessed in advance

by glossy pages of promises

that seduce us to order too much

of what will endure weeks of rain,

a month or two of drought, beetles,

chipmunks, deer, hail and hurricane

before we plop it into our mouths,

the freezer, the frying pan, or, alas,

rotting into the compost pile.

The faintest paring of moon rises

tonight just barely silvering the mounds

of snow that used to be cars, fenceposts,

bushes, a wheelbarrow perhaps.

The world has become anonymous

everything painted and padded white

the road the same as the field it ran

through, the tallest bushes bowed.

We are stuck here without exit,

barricaded into silence. The wind

that pelted the windows opaque

that broke the white fir at its base

that pushed tiny crystal knives

sideways and froze birds on their

perches has slunk away to sea

where it harries ships and gulls.

We will dig out. We will clean up.

A plow will come and recreate

the asphalt road. Town will awake

into lights and people will meet

and ask, how was the storm for you?

How long were you without power?

Trees down? We the survivors

cautiously examine our luck.

It was shortly after dawn.

We were passing an inn closed

for the season when I yelled

“Stop!” I’ve often heard night

herons squawking hoarsely

or the screech of a murder

victim deep in the marsh.

Seldom do I see them. They

hunch on dead trees like old

men in cold weather. But

this black crowned night heron

was standing in the driveway

of the inn engaged in mortal

battle with a five-foot-long

water snake twisting, striking

him whose impulse was to fly off

from us but here was a huge meal.

Breeding season. A nest of young

gaping for food. It stood its ground

the snake grasped in its beak

shaking it, biting into it, lashed

by the long muscular tail. We

crept close enough to see

the heron’s bright red eyes

polished buttons glinting fiercely.

It was an epic battle, Laocoon

encircled by serpents, but here

he was winning, barely. Not

a commanding figure, squatter than

most herons, drably plumaged

not the sort of bird we’d cast

as hero, but he wouldn’t give up.

At last he cut through the spine

and slowly overloaded made his

way flying low toward his home.

Robins migrate, all schoolchildren

learn but here on the Cape, every

winter a flock forms and stays,

long frigid months after their

compatriots have flown south.

They live deep in the woods on

hips and berries wizened by cold.

Sometimes they appear here

among the feeder birds, one

or two almost outcasts.

Off Alaska when humpback whales

leave in fall as the waters freeze

and the world turns white, heading

for mating grounds off Hawaii

and Mexico, certain whales remain.

What makes a creature stay when

almost all of its kind have moved on?

In burned-out areas of Detroit,

you’ll notice one house still wears

curtains, a bike locked to the porch.

Sometimes in the suburbs among

tract houses with carpets of grass

one farmhouse lurks, maybe even

with a barn. I imagine its owner

grey and stubborn, still growing

the best tomatoes for miles, refusing

to plant inedible grass, fighting

neighbors about her chickens,

a rooster who crows at four,

her clothesline a flag of defiance.

The ocean gives; the ocean takes away.

I walked the old coast guard road many

afternoons, just behind the last dune.

Storms slammed it down, the waves

ate it entire with the whole front dune.

I remember a summer house where we

dined with friends several times, remember

how one winter it hung awkwardly half

over the cliff and then it was gone.

A lone pipe remained for another year.

On old maps the hills on the Bay called

Griffin Island, Bound Brook Island were

just that and now solid land. Only

marshes of reed and sedge seethe

and ebb where tall ships docked.

The sea is restless and greedy. It mocks

the summer people with their million

dollar houses with huge decks, vast

glass, chews them up to splinters, then

totes their flotsam away to dump on some

beach fifty miles distant as grey drift-

wood. Every spring we visit town beaches

to find the parking lot broken to rough

chunks, the stairs washed away. Ocean

takes no guff from us tiny creatures

but we get ours back by poisoning it.

The rain that came down last night

in sheets of shaken foil while thunder

trundled over the Bay and crooked

spears of lightning splintered trees

is rising now up stalks, lengthening

leaves that wave their new bright

banners tender as petals, seventeen

shades of green pushing into sun.

The soil feels sweet in my hands

as I push little marigolds in.

Bumblebees stir in the sour cherry

blossoms floating like pieces of moon

down to the red tulips beneath

the smooth barked tree where a red

squirrel chatters at my rescued tabby

who eyes him like a plate of lunch.

The wisteria means to creep over the world.

Every day its long tendrils wave in the breeze,

seize the bench under its arbor, weave

round the garden fence obstructing

the path. Its arbor’s long outgrown.

Such avidity. Such greed for dominance.

It has already killed the Siberian irises

it shadowed, stealing all their sun.

Should I admire or resent? Neither.

I go out with loppers and hack and hack.

If it could, it would twine around my neck

like a python; like an angry giant squid

it would pull me into a strangling embrace.

I will grow back, it swears, and outlive you.

Its vigor outdoes mine. It will succeed.

The evening comes slowly over us,

over the cardinal and the wren still

feeding, over the swallows suddenly

swooping to snatch up mosquitoes

over the marsh where the green

sedge lately has a tawny tinge

over two yearlings bending long

necks to nibble hillock bushes

finally separate from their doe

mother. A late hawk is circling

against the sky streaked lavender.

The breeze has quieted, vanished

into leaves that still stir a bit

like a cat turning round before

sleep. Distantly a car passes

and is gone. Night gradually