April 6 - In 6 days, a year ago, Bruce had the surgery that launched the cascade of tissue death and damage from radiation that killed him. This time a year ago, he was just beginning to be able to enjoy coffee again and was eating solid food. You migrated through three coffee routines in … Continue reading Coffee Pot Elegy
You must have come down the chimney when Iwasn't listening. But the cat heard you.The fireplace grates were knocked over and things from the mantel were on the floor. What does it feel like to visit me as a bird,in the presence of a cat, with no voiceto explain - it's me? Like Acteon, pursuedby … Continue reading Starling Ghost
I don’t know if what I feel about you is grief or not. That is the sentence that was repeating in my mind for awhile as I worked to settle my thoughts on objects that relate to you. I had an idea for a table elegy the other week. I should have written it at … Continue reading Table Elegy
January Elegy #5 Preface I have not written much since he died. I should have forced my way through it, even if it sounded mechanical to me. Because I have now passed the rawest months I can’t recreate. Grief is, for me, I think, all about tiny events. And even Bruce’s dying was a series … Continue reading Blood Elegy
January Elegy #4 I brought back a gift for you from Bali. Salt from the north coast and your choice of two, small, white plates from a local pottery. One of the plates must have been made by pouring slip into a mold that gave it the form of a plate woven from some part … Continue reading Salt Elegy
January Elegy #3 Your glasses are folded upside down on the outlet box above the counter in the kitchen. You got them not long before you died. Your eyes were changing from the radiation. The lenses are smeared with blood I will never wash away, like the blood in between the floorboards of the kitchen; … Continue reading Horizon Line
January Elegy #2 When I wrote January Elegy yesterday, I imagined that I could write an elegy once a month for a year, which means I will already have missed 6. I could reconstruct them. But those earlier months had a rawness to them I can’t reproduce. The pain is not the same. My thoughts … Continue reading Ghost
I wish I had thought of it before now – a year of elegies, one for every month since you died until we get to July. Perhaps July gets 2? But I didn’t think of it until just now. And I hadn’t thought about elegies at all until Lana sent one about Bluebells and you … Continue reading January Elegy #1
Mammalia means one who suckles - to feed a baby from a breast or teat. Londa Schiebinger writes that when mammalia was chosen, there were two other terms in contention - aura caviga, meaning hollow-eared, and pilosa, meaning hairy. But nursing one's baby was politicized, in the time of Linnaeus, for noble women who would … Continue reading
I came across the photograph this morning looking for something else. I took it at the beginning of our trip to Cuba two years ago now. It was the afternoon we arrived in Old Havana. In the photo, you are standing with your left side toward me. You are looking at me. You have your arms crossed, your ubiquitous hoody tied … Continue reading Photograph of ‘the Devil’ and an Old Woman in Cuba
Tiny Events 