Days of Letters and Forgetting

In recent days
When the paper comes, I look for predictions in the weather.
Rain today.
Rain tomorrow.

The heat is growing and the humidity is
killing all form and reason.

I've been lighting the candles still
left in the house that have yet to slump
as many of them have
from this tremendous heat

I suppose it could serve as an archetypal homebody's
metaphor for an "only the strong survive"-
a saying that I never really understood.

* * *

I wake up early
and it's funny how, by now, moving back home
I know when my mother is doing fine by the way she
scoops the coffee into the percolator.
And it becomes very clear the way she stirs in the sugar.
I'm sure one day I will see a change in her wind
But not today.

I bum a few cigarettes and we drink our morning coffee.
Rain today.
Rain tomorrow.

All of the windows are left open and
there is nothing allowing me to begin my day
only the steam in the coffee driving up my nose
the heat of the mug
in that
cold kitchen.

Out of the window I can see cool green grass and
soaked chair cushions.
No dead leaves
Or dregs of snow yet.
Where the ground goes down into a depression
Rain today.
Rain tomorrow.
Slight chance of beer today.
Eighty percent chance tomorrow.

My mother speaks suddenly.
The therapy’s not doing you any good is it?
You aren't getting over him.
My mother has a way of summing things up.

When she goes back to work
I begin my daily burnings.
And I think I might not be able to
survive another winter.
Although it is still summer
Rain today.
Rain tomorrow.
Beer today.
Gone tomorrow.

* * *

A thousand questions hit my eyes from the inside of my lids and
when I finally woke for the first time
quite early this morning
My fingers were numb.
Perhaps it is a side effect from the Ambien
Yet, I believe when they are frozen
Almost certainly, I was dreaming of the childhood that
once belonged to me.
Nevertheless, Judah was there.
The concrete meadow
where he used to play
The imaginary forest behind his house
where everything was discovered and more than
everything was all too possible.
Where he ran so hard he thought he would die.

Yes
I'm sure
that's the sound of his childhood.
Of our childhood.
Heavy breathing and shoes scratching
across the hard dusty earth.
A slight stubborn stiffness of the fingers is
the dream of childhood as it has been returned to
me this morning
as I watch the wax
of the candles melt.