Light in Light. Deborah Gerrish

boyfriend.

      On Saturdays, we would meet

      at the Great Falls just where

      the river makes a grand entrance,

      creates a brash wall of water.

      Cronin’s Oak Tree—

      two o’clock sharp at Overlook Park,

      shared Marlboros like in

      Steve McQueen movies—

      with every smoke ring, I would flip

      my hair back Natalie Wood style.

      Dressed in his black bomber jacket

      with the red letters, Satan,

      stitched across the back,

      Joe wore skinny jeans before

      they were called skinny jeans.

      My dear mother tried

      to lure me from this man—

      I was the cat and she waved

      the wand with bird feathers;

      took me shopping,

      bought me an angora sweater,

      silk stockings and garters,

      an organza dress with crinoline,

      patent shoes, a chenille beret.

      But listen, finally she said, “I forbid you

      to see this boy.” So we set a time to meet again,

      planned to dance at Central High’s

      First Annual Chubby Checker “Let’s Twist Again

      Like We Did Last Summer Contest.”

      My white chiffon dress, red embroidered hem

      flared like the trunk on our front yard maple.

      We did the twist for hours,

      sweating like two unpeeled apples,

      our feet sliding, our shoulders and arms

      swinging back and forth,

      the music loud like the noise of the falls,

      my curly long hair out of control.

      Little Women

      Madame Alexander Dolls displayed in the gleaming

      glass windows of Holder’s Variety Store. Sisters walk

      me to the shop from home to rummage through

      blue-floral boxes. Unfolding layers of tissue, we

      marvel at dolls & miniature wardrobes of clothes.

      Cissy Doll with chestnut hair and cream-rose complexion,

      adorned in her coral chiffon hat framed in tulle

      roseate trim, the moiré knee-length dress with three

      quarter sleeves. On the dressing table, her soft silkaline

      fabric brushes my wrists. The ballerina flared A-line

      enhances her unblemished figure. That wide-eyed belle,

      brilliant eyes with curvy lashes, lids that close and open.

      I try on my doll’s hat; hold up her dress to the mirror.

      Like the magnolia, her silence awakens

      a wide sky, a cloud of being. Little women—

      heritage creatures of eternity, flawless

      porcelain faces, permanent rouge and

      chignoned hair, starry eyes, ageless

      pouting lips. Perfect. World without end like etched

      scenes on an urn: hope & truth & grace in perpetuum.

      Wounded Angel

      —after Hugo Simberg’s The Wounded Angel, 1902, oil painting

      There are good angels and bad ones. Some dazzle, others bleed

      mischief from their eyes. I speak to the ethereal kind yet not the

      evil fallen ones. I’m not talking about cupids scrolled on valentine

      cards but the genre Billy Graham writes about. The hedges

      of angels above beneath behind and beside. Though we are

      a little less than the angels, sometimes injured seraphim and

      cherubim need our human help. If you should witness one in your

      spirit that crash-lands in a haystack in the meadowlands, dangles

      from a city bridge, or gathers snowdrops along the wrong road, carry

      the crippled, then lift the briefly powerless to the air again.

      It could be a fiery dart pierced its legs in battle or principalities tied

      back its wings in flight. Or maybe it flew too close to the sun.

      Sometimes in the early dawn, I’ve heard the chimes of summer,

      I’ve seen an angel rise—

      from where its heels dug dust.

      The Room

      When I think back to the room where I was born,

      I can’t help thinking of that other room.

      Permanent five o’clock shadow,

      eye glasses tight in your dropped right hand.

      You in the leather chair, plaid slippers, the unread

      NY Times stacked on the nest

      of tables, chin on your chest.

      The Yankee game drones across airways.

      The smell of overcooked lamb chop and onions,

      last night’s dishes piled in the farmhouse sink—

      I unlock the front door; push through each room

      imagine my mother, breathing, grunting, screaming—

      your brown hat and worn gloves

      on the chair in the hallway.

      Ben Hogan putter leaning in the corner,

      waving at me when I found you.

      Winter Garden

      It’s Thursday. It’s snowing. It’s

      February. I am spending the afternoon

      with Czeslaw Milosz.