May 12: Carolyn Kizer, "The Great Blue Heron," Same Questions

The Great Blue Heron

by:  Carolyn Kizer

M.A.K. September, 1880-September, 1955

As I wandered on the beach

I saw the heron standing   

Sunk in the tattered wings

He wore as a hunchback’s coat.   

Shadow without a shadow,   

Hung on invisible wires   

From the top of a canvas day,   

What scissors cut him out?   

Superimposed on a poster   

Of summer by the strand   

Of a long-decayed resort,   

Poised in the dusty light   

Some fifteen summers ago;   

I wondered, an empty child,   

“Heron, whose ghost are you?”

I stood on the beach alone,

In the sudden chill of the burned.

My thought raced up the path.   

Pursuing it, I ran

To my mother in the house

And led her to the scene.

The spectral bird was gone.

But her quick eye saw him drifting   

Over the highest pines

On vast, unmoving wings.

Could they be those ashen things,   

So grounded, unwieldy, ragged,   

A pair of broken arms

That were not made for flight?   

In the middle of my loss

I realized she knew:

My mother knew what he was.

O great blue heron, now

That the summer house has burned   

So many rockets ago,

So many smokes and fires

And beach-lights and water-glow   

Reflecting pinwheel and flare:   

The old logs hauled away,   

The pines and driftwood cleared   

From that bare strip of shore   

Where dozens of children play;   

Now there is only you

Heavy upon my eye.

Why have you followed me here,   

Heavy and far away?

You have stood there patiently   

For fifteen summers and snows,   

Denser than my repose,

Bleaker than any dream,

Waiting upon the day

When, like grey smoke, a vapor   

Floating into the sky,

A handful of paper ashes,

My mother would drift away.

_________________________

It's not easy to lose a mother, whether it's a sudden loss or a gradual one.  My wife lost her mother to ovarian cancer when she was 19 years old.  A friend of mine recently lost her 90-plus-year-old mother.  Me?  My mother is still with me, but her memory is failing.  Sometimes, when she looks at me, I don't think she knows who I am. 

My wife thinks of her mother every day.  My friend, as well, I'm sure.  Every time I see my mother, I sit by her, let her ask me the same questions over and over:  "Is it cold outside?" or "Did you have a good day at work?" or "Do you know where your father is?"  I answer her each time as if she hasn't asked me the same question five minutes before.  Because that's what love is all about.

Saint Marty is going to give his mother a card tomorrow.  He will probably have to read it to her because her eyesight isn't good.  Just like she used to read to him when he was a kid.