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Cardinal Points

~ Poetry By Sandra Sidman Larson

Cardinal Points

Category Archives: Grief

She Who Moves Forward Without Moving

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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flowers

For Diana, Princess of Wales’ on the Occasion
of her Funeral, September 6, 1997

On the casket a spray of lilies, a small
wreath of shaking tea roses. Sun mottled streets.
Bells toll. A leopard, his golden paws poised
on a maroon field, stares with alarm
at the mournful crowd. Diana’s riding
through the hunting park today. Two motherless
sons, the blood of Charles II join in. She moves
forward without moving.

Elegant women and men ushered into Westminster.
Welsh guardsmen lift the coffin. Voices of high,
boyish tenors heard above organ chords.
A catafalque awaits under the flying
arches. Over the geometry of the black
and white terrazzo, two royal lineages at odds,
she moves forward without moving.

Limousines pull up in front. The Welsh
guardsmen again, shoulders interlocked,
load the hearse with the weight of an old century
that believes these tears are too trite
for affairs of state. She moves forward
without moving

The hearse heads north to an island crypt
fit for a sister of Ophelia
where on a weedy breeze the sweet power
of discarded women rests and moves
forward without moving.

Published Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

Burial Ghazal

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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Mahwah, New Jersey

We stabbed holes in tin lids to keep our glass-jarred lightening bugs breathing.
Now grown, my cousins and I carry a redwood box with Dad’s burnt-down bones.

Wind echoing in the chimney, a drained maple leaf;
the leaf in azure pottery on a table by itself.

Rain raises blisters on the lake and all afternoon tints the water gray.
This is not a simple story.

Stone steps up a back porch, shelter from the storm.
Rain down the window panes. So many places. What house was that?

Isn’t the magnolia tree exquisite? my great-grandmother often asked.
Since childhood, I’ve held her memory in a magenta heart of white petals.

Every life I’ve lived, I’ve lived fresh, collecting love,
yet, many have disappeared behind strange doors.

Chipped, chiseled, the name Sidman shines on a polished stone.
My children with different names will not be buried in this unfamiliar home.

Published ReImaging, Edited by Nancy J. Bemeking, Issue 33, November, 2002, Minneapolis, MN

This Tropic Death Laced with Cinnamon

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief

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for my father, A. Gordon Sidman Jr.

so it is better to speak
Remembering
We were never meant to survive.

Audre Loudre

In the intensive care unit,
between your short,
shallow breaths,
you reminded me how,
when I was a child,
my friends called mother
Mrs. Cinnamon instead
Of Mrs. Sidman, our family name.
Why did you think of this
just then, seasoned
with a coppice of needles,
lying white in your flavorless bed?
And why, that evening
re-entering the hospital
as the sun anointed the sky red
did I call out Cinnamon,
as if making an offering
as the day shifted
from evening
to night and your death
the next day?

Wave Lengths

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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For my father, Alfred Gordon Sidman, Jr.
1905-1991

An ocean seeping into your lungs,
you have no energy left to change
the rhythm of your life. Tubes run
everywhere in this intensive place of care.

We will not return to that blue bay
where salt marshes oozed
under the weedy-legged docks, and I
extracted crabs from brackish water.
It was you who taught me how
to place my fingers carefully over
a crab’s back, lift him at arms length.

On clear nights like this, hands held
in silent conspiracy, we named new
constellations made by wavering lights
of moored boats moving on edgeless waters
and stood quietly before the inexplicable
spectacle of Scorpius rising.

In the clasp of these last moments,
you can no longer point out to me
the Pleaides, Virgo and Antares.
Your hand in mine, the waves of the heart
monitor rise in sharp crests, then
flatten out as smooth as water
on a windless evening or
a wish with no horizon.

Published in Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

Moving Away, Room by Room

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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for Eleanor Farrington Wills Newmiller Sidman
1907-1988

And that is why people make poems about the dead.
And the dead watch over them, until they are finished.

Larry Levis

In the hall mirror, the living room folds into miniature reflection;
no one seated there. But I see you, Mother, breezing through
the front door carrying packages of stories, trials, fruits, au revoirs.
You are off on another flurry of errands to fill the hours.

In the attic I spread your letters before me; words spilling out
in bundles over the summer of 1929 when the world took a dive,
and you took a boat to Europe. So breathless, the notes from Paris—
Oh, the paintings, the sculpture,
the young men, oh— and their fine white suits!

In the kitchen, I give my condolences to your pots and pans.
How wide were the recipes of your expectations
entertaining the Luddeckes, Kings and the Churches.
Excellent, tasty, a little less salt.

In the bedroom a jumble of jewelry bickers
amber with turquoise, rhinestone with gold—
nothing the secondhand dealer would take off my hands.

Your closet emptied, your bed stripped, I set bags out
for the Salvation Army truck, try to value
the salvage of all you have touched—
the purple teacups, the monogrammed towels.

The night you died I spent in your guest bedroom,
curtains blowing in the soft night wind. Slowly
their panels formed into your lace nightgown,

and your head appeared, glowing as if filled
with gossamer thoughts. Your face as real as it was
when I fed you slivers of ice and brushed
the last tear from your eye.

You were as thin as the leaves of the bougainvillea
climbing the house and as ready to quiver and fall,
and now you hovered by the bed until I thought
of the words to soothe you. I said them.

It’s all right, Mother,
I’m going to be all right. You can go now.

And without another word or gesture of regret,
you did.

Published in Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

Housekeeping with my Eighty-year-old Mother

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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You were thrilled to see our dollhouse
restored before you came to visit—
green shutters, white siding, matchstick
window panes—just as your father had built it
when you were seven years old.

You suggested the shopping spree for miniature tables,
velvet chaises, lamps, and all that could refurbish
our house, but then it came, pain
in your side at night. We were forced
to abandon our plans.

Waiting to hear the surgeon’s report,
I’m the girl behind you watching you
at your chiffon-draped vanity, arms raised,
combing out your chestnut hair, ringed by mirrors,
perfume bottles, atomizers in clusters.

Now arms hanging, the drip of drugs from bottles to tubes,
to arms—your etherized body reflected in mirrors,
wrapped in gauze dressings. The surgeon’s report is not good.
The kidneys are fine, but the pancreas is not.

I gently comb your hair, stir up the wisps resting
on your damp forehead. I’m here, Mother.
standing before you, trying to keep you
on this side of the mirror.

Published Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

Ballroom Dance Partners

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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For Eleanor and Gordon Sidman

i
They had so many records to choose from—
Eddie Duchin, Guy Lombardo, Montivanti.
Centering themselves in the living room, the needle set
in the groove, he places his right hand just above her left hip.
Squared to each other they step together step into a fox trot:
one two three four, one two three four—or a waltz:
one two three, one two three
ii
Lost in reverie they practice for the luxury liner, two
eighty-year-olds who want to duplicate the prize they won
last year—crowned king and queen of the cruise.
The captain’s table their reward along with ermine
cape, crown, and scepter.

iii
In another house, their elder daughter slips out Lester Lanin, spins
him on the Magnovox.. Wearing a strapless gown with a bright red
satin bow, she descends the stairs as if stepping out of new snow.
The tulle skirt, dotted with rhinestones, sparkles
as she greets her date, stiff in his tuxedo.

iv
A gardenia corsage in a florist shop bursts open the thoughts
of the younger daughter to a party gown with sequins splayed over
an electric blue bodice, wind blowing off the moon-papered lake.
Squeeze, squeeze to a rumba beat, to a rumba beat.

v
Now the house is packed up for leaving. The two daughters
pull out the slide carousel, darken the room and watch
their parents dance by one last time—She in her sea-green
voile, full-length gown, he in his white dinner jacket, black trousers:

One two three four—there goes Bermuda.
One two three four—there goes St. Croix, and in the distance, click,
One two three—there goes St. Thomas.

Published in Over A Threshold of Roots

An Adopted Granddaughter Who Didn’t Know It

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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for Anthony Wills

1879-1914

It is the eyes—slightly protruding, dark.
He stares at me.  Holding the crumbling
photo I ask, Who is this? 

Your grandfather, my mother replies.
Then who is the grandfather I call Grandfather? 
The man in the picture follows this question
without taking his eyes off of me. 
My father died when I was seven years
old, and
Nana married again,
the grandfather you know,

my step-father.  He adopted me.

My mother looks like a little girl hiding behind
this man in the picture she’d covered up
for so many years.  I look exactly like him. 

She is silent.  He is silent.
I stare right back at him—
the man with my eyes. 
My blood thickens.

Published, Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

No One Spoke

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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flowers

For Charles and Bessie Newmiller, my maternal grandparents

No one spoke,
the host, the guest,
the white chrysanthuemums.
Ryota

Yellow, pink, crimson, white,roses
rest in a silver vase.

Through the French doors out into the garden,
behind the house on Parkway, I see you,
Grandfather, bending down, the white
New Jersey noon heavy on your back
as you clip your favorite roses.

Across the quiet oriental rugs,
I find you, Nana, sitting in the soft light
of your living room, writing
at the maple secretary,
your back to me.

A single rose stands on one thin
silver leg to keep us company.
The clock ticks on the mantle, china
dogs stare down from the bookcase,
mute as a grandchild watching.

Across the years I see the landscape
of your lives, the enclosure of your plans,
but I would need enormous language, Nana
to have you turn to me, for you, Owah,
to bring me roses—

yellow, pink, crimson, white—
roses for a silver vase.

Published in Over A Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook series, 2007

 

The Distance of Trouble

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots, Politics

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You could hear them screaming or moaning in flight, and…

Jim McKee, Sergeant, Rifle Co. K., 3rd Battalion, 12th Regiment,
4th Division, June 5, 1944 (D-Day)

She was uncomfortable in Charlie’s Butcher Shop, and with Charlie
in his blood-mottled apron. She wondered if the Japs
wore the same kind of aprons when they slaughtered
innocent babies; but now that she’d seen the strung-up bodies
of Mussolini and his mistress in the newsreels, the carcasses
of beef hanging behind the counter disturbed her even more.

At home she’d help her mother twist the orange pill,
squeeze its juices through the pliable body of white oleo,
yellowing the stick to the color of bees. Longing
for butter, she would never eat anything on her bread.

Once a week she and her other classmates
carried blankets, pillows and books into the basement
to wait, hoping to be lucky and have lunch
after the air raid drills were over. Sometimes she worried
she might have to live there with only kindergartners
for sisters and brothers, her teacher for a mother.

In the middle of the night, more sirens, but no Screaming Meanies.*
From her bedroom window she looked into the lamp-less night,
prayed the Nazis were as far away as the end of
the alphabet with their V-1 rockets and U-2 boats, and
that her father, dressed in his khaki Civilian Defense uniform
carrying a Billy club and flashlight, could stop them.

She listened both night and day for the sounds of boots
tromping like rows of heavy geese, leathered feet to the ground,
until she heard the news—Hitler had killed himself
in an underground fort dug for him by his evil friends.

Her parents took her off to camp, said she should stop
worrying about the war; yet along the road there were
billboards picturing fanged men with visor caps
set atop slit-like eyes, arms raised with knives
poised to open the stomachs of tiny babies.

In her cabin, she swatted mosquito after mosquito
and itched the red swellings on her limbs, she
wondered about the Japanese—how they ate
with those large buck teeth and where they were hiding
until she heard a mushroom cloud carried them away
and she saw the giant heads of monster clouds
on the front page of the newspaper.

She wasn’t sure if these events had anything to do
with bodies that looked like pick-up sticks
which had turned up at strange places called
Auschwitz and Buchanwald.

She wondered if the war would ever end, or
just continue running right along side her
and all the other campers. But one bright
Sunday morning, a counselor from Cabin One,
breathless, ran up the path gasping, shrieking;

The war is over!
The emperor has surrendered!
The war is over!

In that royal moment of relief
as they danced and jumped and hugged,
she didn’t realize the world’s grief,
sooner or later, would catch up with them;
nor did she realize then that war was never
going to run out of breath.

*” Screaming Meenies” were German rocket guns, “Nebelwerfers” mounted on a halftrack that fired in clusters of six or twelve, a second and a half apart.

The Japanese surrender on August 1, 1945 thus bringing World War II to a close.

Published Over A Threshold of Roots, Sndra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

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