Little Bells
Add up everything. From The Wind in the Willows, to exams, to cancer. The capitulations from the orange couch cushions with laughter. The time you threw yourself onto the bed after opening the letter from the government, demanding thousands back. The pets always knew when you were at your lowest, Chi Chi, Meow Meow, Banner, Roger, Fox. Over time, you learned how to use one log, push it to the back of the stove, prop kindling up on it to allow for oxygen, while, shakingly cold, you lit a fire. The grey wool sweater you wore until it was so threadbare you nearly embarrassed yourself. But you didn’t. By then you were past all that. The recipe you developed for almond butter cake. It took six eggs! You wrote on the recipe card, “2020, Jamie said of the icing, It’s the best on earth.” The thinness of the soles on your high top burgundy running shoes. The tiny silver key you used to lock your diary. Your cheap sports bras, your herniated disks. Add everything up. The wide-legged jeans, the skinny jeans, the overalls that revealed you as so utterly unsexy. Your black undershirts. The loathsome hate mongers that cause deep grief. Children’s bubbling laughter, public radio, the cost of bread. Forest fires, floods. White Christmases, green Christmases. Your thick hair. Its falling out. The pieces of flesh cut from your cervix that were sucked away up the vacuum tube that ran across your chest that was pounding. You were awake for that. Where are those pieces now? You’re still here. It doesn’t matter. The youthful black and white shots of your dead father, the cool pools of his hound dog eyes. Where are his eyes now? Long gone under. But their light and mischievousness remain. Your step-father’s narrow shoulders, delicate like maroon tulip petals gently furling inward toward your mum. Your step-father’s, Just one more beer, babe… Your mother’s busy hands, her bread, her jam, her pickles, her clean house, her quilts, her tea cups, her gravy. How many novel pages has she turned? Add everything up. Her fingers are so crooked now they look like modern art. Your daughter’s horse-like bones, a defiance of scientific principles. They continue to grow outward, curving past acreages, mountains, and apartment blocks. You can’t quite perceive their discipline. As sure as a metronome, she strode across a fallen tree last summer, right over a river. You were too scared to follow. As though in a carnival’s jar, inside your adult second-born still floats the infant they were. They share your humour, your maudlin ways, your insights, your strife. Unlike you, they smoke and play guitar. Just look at their never-before hands! Coarse nails, vulnerable array of fingers. The blue jay feather, the bear skull, the bell, the satin-edged blanket, the dented washtub, the poem. How the squirrel finally managed to infiltrate the attic. How at 6 a.m. every day thereafter, one layer of hell, it rolled black walnuts back and forth. Little laminated handprints, time-softened letters, pumpkin seeds, old watches with broken bands. At forty-some you stumbled upon the revelatory Evgeny Kissin, then twenty-five, at The Royal Albert Hall, delivering “Paganini, Liszt’s, ‘La Campanella.'” It smashed you apart. The warm scent of your husband’s fraying cardigan. Add everything up. Everything. Your fear. Your fear. Its privilege.
[*”La Campanella” is Italian for “the little bell”]
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Land of Joy
We gathered together not unlike bees
frantic over the setting of something golden,
not unlike maggots
happy as the meat was wrong.
Were our mouths busy with paste?
Papier-mâché, what were we making?
What is your best memory from that summer?
I answered, the time you and I walked together.
While it ranked high, I was maybe fooling myself.
Really, it happened when I went out alone,
amongst strangers. How could I explain?
In all the world, I came upon a toy chicken
made in the 50’s by Fisher-Price,
sun-faded paper peeling from its tattered hen head.
If someone pulled the cord, it clucked.
It was twenty-five cents at the church rummage sale.
But that’s not what I meant, either.
When I entered the church, there was music playing.
Shoulder to shoulder, silent women,
from nearby Reserves, had roused hope
to fill plastic bags with worn children’s clothing.
There were finely embroidered pillow cases,
matted fur coats, threadbare flannel shirts,
and folding metal TV tables with flaked gilt legs.
Brown McCoy mugs were lined up on a table,
pottery that for lifetimes had been cradled by hands,
touched lips and been breathed upon.
I covered my own mouth like a child
so moved with excitement? wonder?, she might wet herself.
I don’t know why I’m crying, mother. Maybe I am overtired.
An older woman stepped close behind me, touched my waist.
I felt her breath as she spoke onto my neck, Sing.
And I did. I already was,
I’ll fly away, Oh Glory, I’ll fly away, in the morning …
There were sundogs everywhere.
My body itself wept as though a suicide was emerging from its own death, at the river.