In the Mirror
She is as close as that hand,
thumb and middle finger squeezing
tweezers, jaw raised high, a stretch
for loose skin on the neck, smile
hitched higher at the right corner
of red lips, crooked nod shifting a lock
of brown hair, right brow arched like the lip—
graying more than the left—fingertip to the middle
of the chin then to the ears, one after the other,
then pulling down the eye, retreating into its black center.
The mirror has no microphone. I don’t hear
her voice. I see her sound sluicing through me:
no don’t touch that don’t go there be safe be good
She is closer than she seems. But I know I sprinkled
her ashes under the lilacs myself,
wet them before I was finished.
A closing act.
The mirror doesn’t lie.
She is closer than she seems.
Here, in the bathroom,
using my hands,
talking in my voice.
– Copyright 2008 by Pamela Papka Sexton
Two Rivers
On the wing, an eagle twists,
scouts a rigid prairie dog.
By inches the sun widens, descends, pulls
clouds along like taffy. Near the river, I sit
watching. An eaglet squawks on its nest,
waiting. Gullies snake the hills
around the canyon’s mouth, their plunge
running snow-melt into the Wind River
where cold water breaks over granite.
Cutthroat quiver in riffles,
then idle into the Bighorn
where the joined waters carried the frozen body
of my father to catch on a willow
near the rookery.
Tied to the thought
of him, I wait for his head
to appear near a one-legged crane sieving
madly, an otter slicking down the bank.
He may be here, swirling around cottonwood roots
in spring, breaking ice edges in winter,
his ears catching moss.
I think I see his eyes, the color of sky,
watching me
through the clear water,
his black hair sweeping back with the current
away from his leathered face.
I hear his song too, the Irish lullaby he sang
at my bedtime and when he danced with Mother,
lilting with the stream then gone.
I look toward Round Top
and know he is there, stitched
in a tuxedo, closed in a bronze casket,
waiting for dust—its slow work.
I long to dig him free, return him
to that moving place,
a place that will not contain him;
where, sitting on the bank, I can still
watch for him.
– Copyright 2008 by Pamela Papka Sexton
Pamela Papka Sexton is a writer, artist and activist. Currently she co-chairs the board of the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Ky., and chairs the board of the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Ky. She is the recipient of the Dantzler award in fiction and the Oswald Award in poetry from the University of Kentucky, the Leadingham prize for poetry from the Frankfort Arts Association and several awards in poetry from the Green River Writers. She is published in numerous places including Limestone, High Performance Magazine, Telling Stories: Fiction by Kentucky Feminists and Crossing Troublesome. She is completing a novel, a short story cycle and a poetry manuscript. Pam is married to Robert F. Sexton and has three children, two step-children and one grandchild.
Tags: grief, hope
