The rain of summer thunders down past the sweet peas
trailing up the staves
of my balcony,
and I,
just returned from a journey,
am sitting among pencils and letters and checkbooks.
thinking of the pleasures of sleeping
in my own bed tonight,
wondering if my yellow roses like this rain,
for “roses,” as a good poet has said, “are heavy feeders,”
and I’m wishing I were with a certain man,
let us call him “Michael,” for that name is common,
and as good
as any other,
but I am alone, as usual,
taking the pleasures one has in solitude,
of music and books,
letters from/to friends,
a good glass of wine,
and I notice that I write the checks first, to pay
my bills,
then write to my mother,
from whom I am often estranged,
and that, unlike all my other pieces of mail, which I file,
as I answer (or decide not to answer), I tear up
my mother’s letter
in her fine bookkeepers’ handwriting,
recalling that I have always saved most friends’ letters,
but always torn up family ones.
Just a note.
The rain has stopped. I
go out on the balcony to check my plants. The sweetpeas
are leaning out into the night. Lightning flashes, quickly,
like the pain which slithers in and out of my right knee
during
crosscountry drives.
I tear up my mother’s letters
because she is a sad woman and has given me
the gift of her sadness.
The words so thin and determined,
reminding me of how seriously we all take our small lives.
And I am ashamed of her letters;
they could be written by me,
that part of me I could never love,
the small, frightened, even stupid part,
determined to be noticed,
when it should rejoice in being ignored.
That too-loud voice which always embarrasses me
in a quiet room.
I tear up her letters
as I have tried to tear that part
out of me.
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