Word after word after word--pouring out mind,
heart & spirit yet somehow the words never find a way to end.
I don't know how to end this story. I seem to have been repeating myself for some time. Don't you find this boring? Isn't it tremendously dull? Not what you were led to expect? No? Well then I will attempt to write the ending again.
There were three daffodils. They were crushed in the rain & wind during the night.
There was a rosemary bush. Oh it must have been over a decade old. I planted it from seed. It failed in last summer's drought. That's for remembrance.
There was the wild prickly ash that the swallowtail butterflies sought out flitting largely over the garden. They lay their eggs between the sharp thorns. Their caterpillars, looking like fat globs of bird dung, shot out fierce red horns when teased with a finger. Yes, well, that game's over isn't it?
There was the bluebell that I planted to atone for my sin of plucking its rare flower. But neighborhood dogs having urinated on it repeatedly--well it's given up the ghost.
The sycamore, the willow, the mountain laurels, the beautyberry. There's a bog of sewage where the beautyberry was--my pipe's clogged.
There were the three cats who died within a month. That was just before I married. The third, wisest, dearest, white Shadow with the six toes spent the night banging her head on the wooden floor in convulsions--howling horribly, fluids seeping from her mouth & I dumb with grief begging her to let go just let go.
There was Ruta Grabazs--who I rode with to Latvian school on Saturday mornings--who’s father had a gentle affair with my aching mother. Ruta died in a car accident & I fumed at how they had dolled her up in thick make up & a prim gingham dress in the open coffin. How she would have railed against it.
There were endings forced with a fist, endings withdrawn in cowardly silence, endings that never had beginnings, endings with the backstab of revenge. Touché.
There was the hob legged stray cat who I warned but still found the next day--hit by a car--the brain loose in her skull--moving with a cold, wet sound--one eye socket empty.
There was the one I held as they gave her the parting shot--she peed on me, cried out as if in an apology and then became still.
So I write of end after end after end but I can't finish because there are pink buds dawning on the peach trees the setting sun always rises again oh will I never find my peace? My security? My contentment? Heaven forbid.
I would die a thousand deaths first.
I dreamt last night of my childhood attic bedroom (and even as I dreamt I thought: isn't it funny that I always find myself here again?). On the shelf near my head lay my son as an infant--quietly asleep--so still. I took him up into my arms--he was so small, so warm, so sweet & dear. A fragile, pale infant. His skin, his blonde-tufted head were so soft with the earthy scent that only infants have.
And so: I end again. With nothing less than a genesis--
2/9/2001
Ingrid
Karklins