Joan Colby- Three Poems

WINTER

 

When it happens, it will happen in winter.

I thought somehow you’d live forever

Resilient as the plastic that never

Decomposes. That the ocean in its perpetual canter

Tosses beachward. When he died you left

That beachside interval. Returned to see

The bleak Midwestern skies of January,

A cold embargo through which you’d sift

For childhood contritions. A chapel door you’d enter,

Everyone in those pews a long time dead.

I should have listened to you when you said

When it happens, it will happen in winter.

We shivered at your grave, the wind a haunter

Picking up the delicate ghosts of leaves.

You prophesied the way a body grieves.

When it happened, it happened in winter.

MORTAL FLIGHTS

 

Someone is always flying to a deathbed.

When Nana was dying, we had to keep her alive

Until Andy, her youngest, could arrive

In his Roman collar carrying the wooden chest

For Extreme Unction, the sacred oils, the crucifix.

We kissed her on the lips. I was excited,

My first death. Mother gave me the eye

That meant don’t put on some display.

It seemed appropriate to cry,

But the tears locked in the ducts

Until, taking me by surprise, as the coffin

Was lowered, I began to gulp and wail.

Years later, Andy dying, my flight

Cancelled due to weather. The words “death emergency”

Sprang from my mouth like magic,

Instead of Denver, I flew through Salt Lake City.

Too late, alas, but I had seen him

Only a month before, when he had the surgery

And awoke, expecting to live.

Racing through the terminal

In Atlanta like a bolting pack mule,

I barely made the connection, heart

Drumming in my ears so that I thought

I might be the one dying. Father

In a coma, one eye shut, one eye open.

Vegetative—as if he had become

A rutabaga or a kohlrabi, a bitter root.

I had to fight to make them turn him off

The way he wanted.

ON THE BIT

If you control the head, you control

The animal

Bridle

Headstall, cheek pieces, curb strap,

Buckles, noseband, split-ear.

Leather soaped and oiled.

Hackamore or simple halter.

Lip chain, figure-eight. Running or standing

Martingale. Racing bib. Parade

Bridle inset with silver and turquoise.

War bridle.

Bits

Easy snaffle, D-ring, run-out,

Kimblewicke, Pelham, egg-butt, gag.

Weymouth bit and bradoon, curb.

Stainless steel.

The Spanish spade.

If you control the head, you control

The animal

Iron headstall gating

The recalcitrant slave.

The Scold’s Bridle chastising

The carping wife.

Pressure and response.

The head lowers,

Eyes grow blank. The mouth

Opens, closes on its burden.

The mind fits into the cage.

If you control the head, you control

The animal.