TERRA INCOGNITA
1
To cleave is to separate yet also to join.
Mother, coming to shove
you understand nothing
wonderfully. Our baby starts
and starts to cry through
the star-struck night, her non-
sequitors rising like the field
behind the house. We say
she's her grandmother's regarding
angel when, a pragmatist in nappies,
she's really deep in shit
just like us.
2
Incense conquering air, a widower's gesture
before the Virgin's image - unbelievable
how ritual animates this house.
I peel garlic cloves so, stir the vinaigrette anti-
clockwise thirteen times. Perfect.
I've been here before. My window
opens onto the bronzed seaboard
cliche. As eggs cackle in the pan I hum
Automatic love is all I want..
Casually it happens, casually
because there is no other way;
for as long as 'as long as' lasts
forget-me-nots fill the vase on the sill.
3
Rosaria, my daughter,
hold that seaspray of white
flowers for your mother now
she is no longer. With us
without - how can we tell
her story? I want to borrow
your grandfather's fedora
because my words are archaic
as the day before she died
in another man's arms. Rosaria,
hold me before I disappear
after her coarsening obituary.
4
Bury your grief with words; tender
flesh to earth, earth to sky
so your daughter will no longer cry
when her father goes on a bender.
Words are the only way to go
home: they fill the gutters,
shake the notary's dusty shutters
once too often. They will lay you low.
David Howard
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