Poems
Grandmother’s Story Stone
I know no Armenian, she no English.
Like a pupil at attention, she sits
in her straight chair by the cook stove,
shuffles pages back to front
in her Armenian Bible. She mutters,
gnarled fingers rowing.
Her black lace-up shoes clunk
back and forth across scrubbed linoleum.
Her cotton stockings sloop
into ankle bracelets. She slings onions
into her bib apron from a bushel basket.
Her sun-browned hands tuck grape leaves around rice,
pry up the stove lid, push in kindling sticks.
Her whiskers sprout from greasy wrinkles,
garlic, olive oil, mint, her perfume.
I brace for her kiss.
When she speaks with my father
my ears tune the soft guttering.
I whisper behind my hand
scubbity, scubbity, scubbity.
Memories ghost August sunlight,
slant through blinds. Stories never told
collide in the parlor, migrate
behind the curio cabinet glass door,
colonize her mementos with silence.
I beseech her story stone to speak.
Like those who sucked stones
in the Syrian desert I’m thirsty for more.
Her voice roosts inside me, pricks my skin,
a straight pin lost in my skirt hem.
Their Boots and Spikes
Pickelhaube spikes on their helmets
the ghost soldiers come again.
They crowd the top of the stairs.
Heavy boots stomp down and down.
My three sisters and I huddle
in the back corner of the coal cellar
waiting for the metal latch to lift
on the thick oak door.
Will they find us if we stop breathing?
Yes, they will pull the light string.
I spread my body as wide as it will go
in front of my sisters. I’m sweating.
I startle awake,
alone in the small bedroom
just off the dining room,
where morning after morning
I hear his footsteps approaching.
One parent asleep, one awake
pushing the door open
across red linoleum, rubber doorstop
sliding with a soft swish,
his hands, the boots and spikes.
A Single Icicle
Icicles lined the gutters of our house
in New York farm country.
Thick as our arms
they reached into the snowbanks below.
We plucked the smaller icicles,
sucked them until our lips turned blue,
so numb we couldn’t form our words.
In those days winter arrived early,
stayed for months.
We had sword fights,
our ice blades fused to our mittens
as we became the cold.
We knocked the icicles down with snowballs,
smashing holes in the line
like a TV prison cell breakout,
our screams of triumph
when a whole wall came splintering down.
Now near the Salish Sea
winter makes its evanescent visit—
a week in February
when winds from the Fraser Valley
swoop down upon us—
it lasts just long enough for a single icicle
to form outside my window,
rainwater dripping and freezing
to make its point.
Night Sky
When I was young and our son was small
you painted the heavens on his bedroom ceiling
in fluorescent paint so the stars would shine all night
and now when I am old and pierced with pain
you clean the house and hang the laundry
wash the dishes every night and you say
that’s fair since I cook our dinner
and this love you hold for me is a boundless miracle
like the night sky I cannot do without.
Singing in the Choir with My Mother
There was no rugged cross behind the altar,
only three padded chairs,
maroon with high carved backs
below a rose window,
the only color in the church.
The largest chair flanked
by two smaller ones like a king’s throne.
I sat next to my mother
in the soprano section.
Dot, she was called,
was the diva soloist
though my mother’s voice was sweeter.
I would look out at the congregation,
wonder about the gray-haired people below.
One Sunday we sang for a baby that had died.
I cried through every hymn,
though I didn’t know the family.
When I hear the old ones today,
Rock of Ages, Abide with Me,
a lump forms in my throat.
Attending our Presbyterian church
didn’t stick with me.
It was being with my mother,
the one thing we did together in those years
that made my heart light like a songbird,
and when I joined my voice with hers
all was well, a state of grace.
Evanescent
What rides
on a snowflake
dust particles or pollen?
Adrift riding a crystal drop
steady slow
nowhere
in particular to go
snow angel
tick tick tick
in the hush flakes touch down
fugitives
they fall.