Granite ledge edges
Tree-tufted valley below
Yellow sodden green.
Seven years ago today Eric died, on a glorious, sun-drenched day. The forsythia was blazing, warm air drifted through the open windows and the maple buds were dropping their red skin to let the green leaves out.
Six years ago I wrote this poem, on another day of spring sunshine, the forsythia bushes in the neighborhood bringing me full circle to the season of loss. Finally, I was understanding Eric was really gone, and that holding on to life, while honoring his loss, might just be possible. ”Razor Life” is the penultimate poem in The Truth About Death. It’s not an easy poem, it’s not an easy book, but it’s the truth as I lived it. A sister poet recently reviewed the book on Amazon and Goodreads and said “grief is palpable, yes, but so is the skill of the poet . . . this is not a romantic look at death, but rather a blunt and powerfully raw assessment.”
That assessment now includes knowing the rawness of grief does ease, the razor edge softens, and days march on and on whether we can keep up with their beauty or not. A few days ago I came upstairs to find a swallow flapping in front of the big windows in my study, the room where Eric died. It had flown in the small opening of our shaded bedroom window and moved towards the light. David helped it fly out without any harm.
I still watch swallows against the sky and the cows are already out in the pasture across the road. Everything changes; so many essentials stay the same.
Razor Life
The pastures are green again, right on cue,
the cows will be out in days. I steal lost time
to meet you, where the train runs into the river,
it’s dark and we move fast, forsythia flashes
gold in our yard, the neighbors’ yard, the bush
in the cemetery on the hill, the catbird who sang
above the blooming lilac in the weeks of desperation
on the porch after you died, you died, you did,
swallows high in the blue, their bellies white
as they turn. I am back to watching the sky,
we still have a car for everyone, we drive a lot,
I talk all the time, the machine is working,
it’s everything will be okay and ah fuck
at the same time, all the time, my razor life.
Albany is a city of contrasts. Historic brick row houses line streets leading downtown, where the castle-like State Capitol building points its red-roofed turrets into the sky next to the stark, flat geometric shapes of the enormous Empire State Plaza. ”Albany is full of concrete,” Sam said to me when I told him David and I were headed there for his 40th medical school reunion. Actually, it’s marble, not concrete, but the Empire State Plaza is a huge expanse of gray space, rimmed by tall gray buildings, and I could easily see why someone would remember Albany as a city full of concrete. There’s even a giant gray Egg, a performing arts center that sits on the plaza like a space ship.
The highlight of the weekend was spending time with Harry, David’s good friend, and driving west out of Albany to a small town to find the farmhouse David rented for three of the years he was in medical school. On the way there, David was talking about some recent issues that had been bothering him, and Harry said, “Your problem is your tedious habit of introspection.”
David and I laughed and nodded in agreement immediately. Harry meant tedious to David, and in laughing and nodding in agreement, I was acknowledging how tedious my own habit of introspection is to me. ”You intellectuals think and talk too much,” another friend said to me years ago.
Yes, David and I are introspective and we talk about that introspection a lot. In fact this blog post is going up a day later than I’d planned because we got caught in a long, tedious and deeply introspective cycle of talk yesterday.
But that’s okay. We’re both old enough to be able to ride along with who we essentially are and make our way to the moments of appreciation and peace that the tedious process of introspection makes possible.
And how does this all relate to Albany other than Harry having made the comment there? The contrasts in that city between ornate historic buildings and vast modern buildings remind me of what it’s like inside my brain. Grand and multi-faceted, gray and flat, tall and wide, big in scope and rich in detail, simple and complex, all cycling in a swirl that lets me laugh at my own tedious habits and relish what they make accessible at the same time.
Notice the title has changed; not above tree line, but above the trees. David and I got up Sunday morning with the intention of driving to the White Mountains to hike Mt. Pierce, fulfilling our New Year’s intention for April. But after a busy week of travel for family visits, and an upcoming week of more travel, we didn’t want to spend a good part of the day in the car. This intention was meant to help us make time to do something we enjoy, not to turn into a chore or an obligation. We already have plenty of those.
So we climbed Mt. Major, a small mountain south of Lake Winnipesaukee, bare granite at the top because of a long-ago fire, with beautiful views across the lake to the above tree line ridges of the White Mountains to the north. We decided getting above the trees would do just fine, and it did.
We were home in time to sit in the sun, out of the wind, and let some of the new season sink in. We needed that.
Yesterday David and I spent a few hours in Manhattan. We dropped Emilio off at daycare, took the train to Penn Station, and went for a walk — 7 miles, through the Greenmarket at Union Square, then down the Bowery through Chinatown and Little Italy and back up Broadway with a two-bags-full stop at the Strand Book Store. As we walked, I thought about our plans to spend today in Boston, ending with my reading with other WordTech poets at Boston Public Library. Then on Wednesday we had plans to spend time with Melia in Portland. Three days, three cities. Sweet.
Except yesterday ended in sorrow and dismay, and today was not what we planned, not what thousands of people in the Boston area had planned. There is so much sadness in the world due to natural causes, why does anyone do anything to add to it? I know that sounds ridiculously naive and innocent, but it’s a time of year that generates sadness as I move into the zone where I remember everything that was happening from seven years ago, as Eric’s grave illness was diagnosed and he got sicker and sicker. That grief gets layered with other losses and struggles of people I love dearly who are very close to me, people I care about who are a little further out, people I don’t know well but whose difficulties cross my path and send in ripples of sadness, people I don’t know at all, but whose losses happen in the public sphere and so we all know about it almost instantly and feel a flash of their pain. As we did yesterday.
Tomorrow we’re still planning to go to Portland, so it will be two cities in three days, with a swim through sorrow in between.
Traveling south this time of year, into a spring far advanced past its current muddy incarnation in New Hampshire, is a treat. David and I were in Knoxville, TN this weekend, to be the support team for Sam and his friend Mike as ran they ran their first marathon. Besides the pleasure of being with two smart, strong and very funny young men as they pushed their bodies pretty much to the breaking point, there was the delight of sunny days with temperatures in the 70s, and lines of dogwood trees showing off their white blossoms against blue skies. I’m ready for more of that, right here at home.
As we crossed a street on Saturday evening, littered with fallen petals, I thought of this poem, from years ago, realizing I will probably never stop noticing how trees shape-shift through the seasons.
Rising
What is the weight of a flower, the weight
of a tree bearing such blatant intent?
Every mass of blossoms, snow cloud,
exclamation, exuberance of fruit
to come, has a future, a history,
a moment of abandon, petals
splayed wide, drawing pollen to the core.
The wilt and decay towards apple
is hidden in new leaves, riches spent,
riches returned, petals salting the grass.
Alison and I did a last ski of the season on Sunday. Okay, maybe it wasn’t classic skiing. It was more like walking in the woods with skis attached to our boots, including literally walking in big ski steps across the open parts of the trail. At the height of our climb up Tarleton Road, just below the steep pitch to Neville Peak, there was still a good bit of snow, though it was very soft and wet.
But further down the trail, there were many spots where the snow was gone, so we skied around grass and sticks and rocks. At one point coming down a hill, one of my skis was gliding through the wet snow, the other slipping through a mud puddle. But we were skiing, celebrating a great season of snow.
A good ski year is always a reason to be grateful, and this year I’m also grateful on behalf of someone I love who has most likely had her last ski, period. As in she is so sick she most likely won’t be here during ski season next year, and if she is, she won’t be skiing. She could barely ski this year. I carry that reality with me, grateful for what I have and what I can do, and holding on to awareness of those I bring with me, those who can’t be out kicking and gliding through the frozen world themselves.
Grace Mattern is a poet, writer, mother, grandmother, partner, friend, family member, gardener, triathlete, hiker and for 30 years was the Executive Director of the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. She resigned her position at the Coalition on June 15, 2011. Her poetry manuscript The Truth About Death was published by Turning Point Books in April 2012.
