About time or,…
Wendy Vardaman
About time or, I take the feathers, my brother, the ash
when our father leaves his collections: cameras,
light bulbs, rechargeable batteries,
hundreds of cheap watches: our mother can remember when a watch
cost a week’s wage. You wouldn’t want to get caught
without: our father’s father died for lack
of time, trapped at work
on a railway bridge, train late as usual, according
to the note recovered in his wallet, returned after cleaning
to Grandmother. The pocket watch swinging
on its gold chain went to the elder brother, still ticking.
my mother and I decide that
the best way to get rid of
our oppressive quantities of stuff
is to burn the house hers and mine
she lights the fire which starts
but doesn’t take I pace and wait
we watch it flame up die back worry
that we’ll never get shed of the useless piles of paper
tackle tools hats that the kitchen campfire smoke will draw a fire truck before
it’s too late the vet walks in from off the street asks after the forgotten
cats one’s disappeared the other’s stretched across the counter large hole burned
through his skull as if he were paper the doctor pinches its rim to stop the
burning conversion of cat to ash then asks with a physician’s matter of fact
do you think he’ll be bitter about that
She shakes loose the packed
vest and little feathers like ash
fly out, fall from raw nubs, clipped for bagging. It’s what he wore
to play the lead in Mister Angel—more
than fifty years ago—when he took off his jacket, you could see the wings—
and here, she adds, drawing out an identical but wingless
mate, is what he wore while
he was mortal.
The day before the cremation we went to visit him
one last time, covered, always cold, to the chin
by a homemade patchwork quilt that didn’t belong to them. He hadn’t shaved
and little tufts of transparent hair spilled
out—soft, silvery, like down, like feathers, but not like wings—
around his ends,
Wendy Vardaman - Wendy Vardaman, has a Ph.D. in English from University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Engineering from Cornell University. Co-editor of Verse Wisconsin, her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. She lives in Madison, WI with husband, Thomas DuBois, has three children, and works for the children’s theater company, The Young Shakespeare Players
e-mail: wvardaman (at) hotmail (dot) com
Web: wendyvardaman.com/
