Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

NATALIE KUSZ
After Bedtime
At night, with the coal stove stoked
and banked to burn low, its tea kettle filled and moistening
the air, my mother made the night rounds, visiting
each bed in turn, replacing fallen blankets
and pillows, pulling the thumbs from our mouths,
bending in toward our faces
to confirm that each of us breathed. Sometimes,
now, in my daughter's dark room, when I cover
her stray foot with the sheets, pick up
the book and pen flashlight where she hid them, I know
how our mother must have stood there, desiring
to wake us again on a pretense—some question
about school, a reminder to carry our lunch
or field trip money—anything
to lengthen the day by one more
conversation, spoken at leisure
with the TV off, every errand complete, no bubbling dinner
to distract her. She deliberated—I know it—
then left us sleeping, but occasionally—
if she touched and then left us
and we faded awake for a moment—
we could hear her slow footfalls retreating.
Letter to David, My Father's Best Friend
I am recalling the last homehaircut
he extracted from me: the usual
"I like your way, and its cheap," how the whiteblond
arctic sun bore itself rapidly
winter-ward overhead. His iron
chair readied on the boardwalk, the plum vinyl
hero's cape spread waiting in my hands,
he rested on the steps in half-descent, an apologetic
wheeze to his speech. "Almost," he said,
"but first some air," and my sister lowered
the oxygen tube down the porchway, settling
the soughing cannula in his nose. Finally
two last stairs, a hunching stride, the chair pads
hissed exhale underneath him. I made it
quick: the shrouding plastic, the furrowing comb, the cautious
humming clippers behind each ear. Shoulders,
nape, he received the full trim, requesting by gesture
the sprouted brows. Around us, off the cape
cut white petals slid earthward. David,
they lay there still this summer, settled
between the boardwalk planks, spilled over-edge
on the gravel. You and I walked over them—remember—
those matting curled husks, mementos more surely
than the dead man's shirts we carried away. I
left them—some misplaced
fear of morbidity, perhaps, the styrene
dashboard Madonnas I despise. Yet today
your recorded voice speaks of snowfall, your first
cold-weather check on Dad's house. My trustworthy friend
I write to send thanks, to mention forgotten
leaf rakes along the drive. And tomorrow
if you travel peering past the house, stop
in a minute: there by the porch steps, a low
bank will have blown; skim it away, palmsful
at a time, lift out an envelope's
load of white hair, and preserve it
among the garden seeds till I come.