|
CHAD NORMAN
After the women left
One day every week the women went to town
at different times for appointments with grocers,
doctors, hairstylists, or to study the bible and pray
in a living room being lit by a late summer sun
quietly drying the wash they left on their lines,
a late summer sun they comment on in stores
pleased to be away from the demands of men.
During the few hours Bert knew the house was his
to fill a pipe, to brew some tea, to seem well,
required nothing other than a clarity he claimed
in front of the grandson left unable to question
moments easily described as miracles, simply
an afternoon when a disease seemed to rest,
not to rely on his wife for a box of matches,
one match she usually lit to start the pipe,
an afternoon when his mind came back
and a memory of a trip to family in Coquitlam
became the story he shared with wide smiles
appearing between puffs he exhaled, he blew
in the direction of a picture used to divide
the on-going past from a time he stood by
a window waiting for his wife to drive in,
to allow him to be in need again, arteries hardening.
The return of a wife late in the day ends silence
her goodbyes coming in the kitchen window
after wheels grew loud on dry carport stones,
her hellos filled the hallway into where he
resumed a kind of partnership with dying,
went away from being who she wished to ask
out to their swing, cool & still, in a maple's shadow.
The other yesterday
Time or fashion or the age had nothing on Gladys.
And I believe she knew what she needed to know
to be her gender, to be all the women she was,
comfortable in a selection of chairs away from
and part of the farmhouse she kept and
fortified. .
When the day came to drive with other wives
able to occupy her choice to be a Christian
with the chosen scriptures and popular cookies
meant to enhance the weekly prayers for others
put forward by a congregation she knew by name.
At home Bert pretended to fix an edible snack & tea.
The afternoon spent listening to the clock & cattle,
a silence in the kitchen helping him to accept routines
they must be alone to know, and together to call their own.
A few hours apart allowed Gladys another happiness
in an era when the church prospered beyond the pew,
mothers, sisters, grandmothers, women after years of love,
on a road they follow to home, the road back to a fridge,
a table, a sink, a meal of leftovers, a holiday apron on a
hook.
Summer flies
After the July day's jagged heat
became dusk's prayed-for breeze
Gladys, a sly fading grin,
almost gave away her amusement,
routinely took down the
red wire-handled rubber swatter
with one hand, and led the
shy suburban boy with the other,
her visiting daughter's only son
chosen over the other grandsons
usually around, loud, shoving to show
how to squash a lot with one swat
out in the shaded yet stifling
favourite glassed-in side porch;
Gladys, a low loving snicker,
she almost let turn to full laughter,
loyally decided the kitchen's demands
would wait a moment or more
to cheer silently as the
helpful merciless boys ended the hunt,
to gladly offer a round of Revellos
in order to enjoy one herself,
and also a moment to forget
how, at dawn, all the filthy little corpses
seemed to signal replacements alive & abuzz.
|
