Late June (Poems for Stephen Gardner)

Late June

For Stephen L. Gardner

More than seven months since I lifted your hand

from the hospital bed, my thumb petting its warm

dry back, rougher than imagined, trying to coax

out the coma through the pores, summer arrived:

heat before the Solstice, pouring in on the ferns,

exploding the lilies, open-mouths of spotted petals,

stamen reddish brown as the psoriasis on your skin.

Because there is no gravesite to visit, headstone

to trace with fingers pressed in to carved out words,

I memorialize you often and in strange places: once,

my tires crunched an ice cream cone, sweet and brittle

on asphalt. I imagined ashes stuck in tire tread, traveling.

At night, curled in the hospital recliner, your breath

too rhythmic to be natural, I searched for the silence

I could sleep in. Some moments you were present

as someone resting; in others, the room was empty

of you: I questioned your consciousness, how much

you were seeing, hearing of this room full of wife,

mother, friends, me—somewhere between student

and daughter, never one and not the other.

In your last days I wondered if I was doing it right,

questioned the proper vigils to take: hand holding,

consoling, praying, reading Roethke—sure familiar

vibrations of words would reach, maybe even wake,

you. When they didn’t, I went back to rubbing, this time

the thumbs, letting gravity and the natural bend

of your fingers hold my hand in return.

Now, when June turns to July and fireflies are lazy,

dotting the shadowy undersides of maple leaves,

I return to writing poems. It is what you taught me.

It keeps you close. Syllables bloom into stanzas,

wrap the page in pigment and ash.