Some place down the line, I'll wake up older
So much older mama,
I'll wake up older and I'll just stop all my trying." --Jackson C. Frank
You, wearing your father's coat
and a ribbon in your hair,
you're the one I spoke to in a blackbird dream.
You, like a pocket sun,
burning down and rising up in continual blaze
all while reading a book, riding the bus, counting raindrops on the pane.
At home you wear a long shirt
made from calendar pages and paste.
Both are white as summer light, or a fallen blue jay's breast.
You, in love with Michigan in the fall, Morrocco in hazel eyes.
In your boot, a trove of travel tickets,
bad paper, and the echo of smoke-gone nights.
You lay your heart in the curve of the sickle moon
and claim to have no desires,
but they leave your skin and howl in the hills all night.
You, with a sense of home in your chest like a tumor,
wounding and soothing you like the gin you used to love
until you can hardly stand it anymore.
There is a house from 1925, with a Packard in the drive.
Someone is washing it as if it were a memory
there on the tarmac arc beneath the pear tree.
You held your dolls up against the leaded windows
before you were born, after you died,
before any of this thorned tapestry you're stitched into now.
The leaves are turning red, the nights are cool.
There is no kiss that holds a hospital for souls,
no soft-bound convent that knows the right prayer.
You can just listen to the yarn-ball clock and when you're ready
let it fall, think of nothing, and find yourself home
where we're waiting for you, those whose names you knew, and now recall.
______
Music: Janis Joplin Little Girl Blue
