“In the Doorway, Mother,” “Caveats at Ape Caves,” and “A Certain Kind of Dying”

Your papery lips press mine

hungry as a predator’s beak.

Our ears brush: hearing aids

clack and buzz.

Pull apart

The heat where our breasts met

evaporates.

Cool and dry, your fingers

imprint my bare arm.

Once acrobats on the piano keys,

your fingertips barely open and close

over the slivers of breath you puff

through your alto recorder.

 If only you would blow me a sweet word.

Instead our ritual—settle at the kitchen table,

its white Formica filigreed with scratches

blackened by the ink of your Chronicle and Trib.

Bronzy-green, the ceramic leaf that cups your pills.

Re- heat your coffee, my Earl Grey.

I do not ask if you are scared.

You do not talk about your stroke,

your left hand that will not obey

Bach’s staccato. My hand

that does not move to hold yours.

Years ago I fell for a man in Mexico
on the run for a murder he didn’t do.

His mossy chest so sweet I crawled right in.

                                       *

Now I grip a railing sleek and cold.

Vacillate above wet, uneven steps,

descending to mossy boulders—

green allure—at the mouth of an abyss.

                                       *

Discovered, 1920, by a farmer whose

tractor pitched into this hole. He fetched

a rope, belayed into the unknown, crawled miles

between stone, his lantern, dim.

                                      *

O, the seduction of tunnels.

                                     *

Gramma took me to her childhood cave

a hole half-hidden under a mound. I

squirmed in on my belly; daylight closed.

The damp black sucked my courage. I backed

out, but I tried, I had to try.

                                     *

At Ape Caves, a child can walk in.

Five-year old Mason. We did it

all the way! Dad pushed me

up and through.

                                    *

How can I know unless I go?

                                    *

Erishkegal, Persephone called me

to their underworlds. I followed—

I have always followed.

                                    *

Ape Cave yawns, a shimmer

of slime, bottomless—

                                   *

I stand long

at the entrance. Imagine

disappearing

into a whale, a grave.

I know too much about a certain kind of dying,

the kind you plan in states where the law allows.

 

I can tell you what forms to fill, what pills

to take, how to mix the potion. I hold hands

rub bellies. You’re an angel, one says to me.

 

                                                         But I’m no angel,

only boxing up anxieties.  As if

these brief bedsides show me the way.

 

As if I can make my own end

silver and sharp as nails in a coffin.