Shadow Shadow

I, too, once spouted yards of poetry, and rushed

the sunrise into my sister's giggle, slamming the door

of one chamber into another until my father, rabbi

of the only synagogue in the Berkshires, collared us

by the scruff and swore

there would be no honey cake if we

woke mother (two of her could have sailed

to America in Emily's housedress) the smell of schnappes

hovering in his beard's underbrush. I

never hung back at the top of the stairwell, drawing

pictures in my head of anyone's

parlor shenanigans, especially

my father's, who firmly said never pisch,

pardon his Yiddish, in the pot you eat from, but like her

my intensity gathered in my belly,

the hearth, the staircase

spiralling to the cupola, where I cried and choked

on father's refusal to bless

my first marriage: You remember that northwest

window in our room? Where Emily

lowered ginger

and almond cookies to the little ones squinting

up at the sun and reaching for the shadow

that became a bride lowering herself on old shoestrings

braided for strength and magic

out of that white whale of a house, no velvet

neckpiece to set off the mixture of fear

and desire glazing my wide, brown irises-not yet

puffed and diminished into wrinkles, or mocked

by rouged dark bags of tears I've held in check

in case you, or any young man with a pen

or tape recorder, would break the dry

monotony of this retirement

city named for the sun, without an oak or the little ones

to carve the acorns for Halloween; the sun

my second husband willed to me

after scattering his ashes into winds

that slapped a few

white fragments back in my face. Emily

and I share a secret. We knew the same loose board, nearly

equidistant from the stove and closet

where the curators display her dress. There was a poem

folded twice; so bitter; so simple.

I put it to memory. It became-like a lapis lazuli

scarab carved by some ancient Hebrew craftsman

and welded by time to the breastbone

of a pharaoh-our poem. Breaking faith, if let it go.

However, I'll tell you this: You are young; you have

my father's mouth; his high forehead, wrinkled and glowing

satin in the night, and absolutely

no one gradually withdraws from life. Someone inside,

like a seed breaking free of the groundfallen fruit,

puts out her own

taproot like a wing, and either flies or doesn't.

We didn't. It was all a dream. Linen and gaberdine.