@3Mortals live by mutual interchange. One breed increases by another's decrease. The generations of living things pass in swift succession, and like runners in a race they hand on the torch of life.@1 Lucretius, @3De Rerum Natura@1 The Powers Hotel in Fargo Utrillo print of a country church in snow, the dead eye of a TV, a poison-green bedstead, a man down the hall calls out - you can smell the booze even in the hall - "I just wanna li'l luvin.'" I call the rectory. A priestly voice humorless as lard on bread says, "Take 81 to the road marked Dead End; turn left. It's a dirt track." There's a storm watch. As I leave the hotel by the back door the wind chatters the chandeliers like some memory of chaperons' tongues dusty now as the darkened ballroom. We drove - mother and grandmother - propping his drowsy head between us as we sang him to sleep, two harsh-voiced women off-key, "Row, row, the bear went over, Casey would waltz but don't go near the water," until he slept between the steering years of our arms. A Jewish cemetery, then Holy Cross. We're off the highway and next door to the airport. Two firs and a dying elm watch over the Lugars and Trautmans - Dorothy 1900-1976. Across the road a field already fermenting with summer heat furrows straight to the horizon. I walk the ditch beside it gathering a bouquet: white heads of yarrow because it has followed me along the whole route, a stem of wheat for bread, a foxtail because it is a redheaded weed, dame's rocket for beauty, meadow anemone because it heals wounds. Thunder boils in the dark massings of cloud rolling down the openness it possesses. I lay the flowers on her name. Mother, I have to leave now, drive to the next time zone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOCTOR OF BILLIARDS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON THE CHARIOT by EMILY DICKINSON A PRAYER FOR INDIFFERENCE by FRANCES (FANNY) MACARTNEY GREVILLE WHEN ON THE MARGE OF EVENING by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY THE DAY-DREAM: THE SLEEPING BEAUTY by ALFRED TENNYSON |