“To Marilyn Buried Next Door” and “Your Girl”

Part One

When I first learned you were there,

that you had been there all along,

I felt that you had been watching me

and I wondered what I was doing when you arrived.

Did you, in your maternal stillness,

know that I dwelt beyond our mutual fence?

Did the soft cadence of my voice or the loud trance

of the radio disturb your death silence?

When your eyes, his eyes, rolled back to before

did you think I might hear your quiet parting

and come with a hand to keep you here?

All along, while your eyes dimmed

and breath disappeared from the crone body,

I was near, chopping vegetables for dinner

or having my first sip of coffee.

I was finishing up a kiss,

or starting something new.

He was digging a hole.

You were swaddled and waiting

for the final tumble—

your boy’s boot at your back,

and me out back,

parting the moist Florida dirt

for the season’s last lily.

Part Two

I thought that you would rise to meet me as my second self.

You, resting in an early grave,

and me in my home of youth and marriage.

Both lie close to the children splashing in the pool,

their laughter a weevil in your ear.

The crunch of bone white landscape rock,

the dryness in your eyes.

The four-bedroom ranch-style home,

an absent ache in your now unlocked spine.

The patio parties with grilled hot dogs

and your recipe for cold potato salad

fill the creamy summer months as they slide past

like Coppertone down a tanned back.

The warm beating that once filled you

is replaced by the hum of slow decay.

Your lungs are two claws retracting.

Detectives exhume you two days before Christmas.

I tiptoe through the grass to listen from my side of the fence

while they plunge shovel after shovel,

grinding the gravel with urgency, and laughing

like people do when the hour is late and the work is long.

is chameleonic in pink.

She flushes fuchsia, cherry blossom, raspberry, even flesh—

for each season speaks through her.

She is part of that which she grew from

like a little root inside the larger,

glowing with its sacred smallness.

She is a template for the things

that will grow from her

to become astonishing universes.

She is the Creator:

the deft and calloused hand

that unbinds the cotton boll

weaving its fibers until they

are themselves made stronger.