Septet

One of my four daughters died in March of 2022. These seven sonnets (or almost-sonnets) have emerged during the months before and after her passing. More will come, I hope. as they soothe me somewhat.

Bob/Tavia

After he died, his butterknife appeared
with our utensils: ovoid, spatulate,
serrated briefly at one curve—a weird
wee row of baby teeth, to separate
a bagel with, or scour seeds from a melon—
and trowel-broad, almost a mason’s tool:
a glutton’s sidearm for a kitchen felon.
It’s come to matter; come to be the rule
in recipes; become a knife of Life
that, lost again, is suddenly my daughter
fighting for hers, and I, lost as the knife
gone from the upturned drawer and soap-grey water,
ransack the angry kitchen, on a roar
at things that leave, and lives that are no more.

MB - 9/21/21



No Words
(For Kerry)

Finally, we are each an accident.
Blood is no guarantee of symmetry
or sameness; nor is love a guarantee
of peace or comfort. We are each the work
of others we have never met—a chain
of strangers, themselves linked to other strangers.
So, when two of us knit—become one wood,
sharing a root, yet bearing different fruit—
what solace for the perishing of one
without the other? Or what metaphor
to explain the failure of all imagery,
even of photos? None: no remedy—
possibly, just a moment’s mirth—at life
showing up again at the old gunfight with a knife.

MB - Easter, 2022



May Mourning
(For Tavia)

You’re still not still. How can I know you’re gone,
yet know that if I call, you will pick up
and sing-song your hello and laugh upon
the slightest pretext while we share our cup
of joe and whisk away another morning?
What’s happened to the fact of you, that now
I doubt, yet don’t? Your February warning,
quiet and clear—This is my last year—how
did I receive that? Did I at all, though
both of us thought so—both of us in tears,
with only weeks to go? What did we know
of how we’d end the dance? Of how the years
would rush into moments—moments, into air—
Leaving me absent here, and you still there.

MB -  May 14, 2022



My Own

I watch all fathers now; especially
fathers of daughters. I surveil each touch,
each look, each tone of voice, each perfectly
unnoticed gesture’s easy toss and catch—
she thirsting, he replenishing without
a thought of thirst—their casual seeding of
the new field they will till forever—sprouts
rising, even in their footprints—muddy love
under their nails, at corners of their smiles,
making its mess: their mural. And my own
four—three yet living—turning in the aisles
of this year’s harvest, wondering what was sown
that so befell the crop. Only grief growing,
and an old man at the field’s edge, slowing going.

MB - 8/8/22



Click

What are they smiling at, these two good-lookers?
Or is it just the ingrained lens reflex
that we developed with our photographs—
the ready look of joie de vivre, absent
particulars or context, saying merely,
Happy: check! Keep on moving! (Nothing here
but wishes being made to keep our souls
from being stolen yet again; although
our souls are quite safe, if we only knew.)
Or is it just that love shows up, regardless?
You can’t take pictures of an absence, but
you can’t be absent from it. You can only
observe an instant missed from a history
finished; fresh as a daisy now; and gone.

MB - October 8, 2022



The Second Year

Now, when more than a heartbeat finishes
without my knowing Tavia’s dead; when whole
days fill with lesser things—my skirmishes
with doorknobs and devices, dearth and dole;
when I am caught red-handed living on—
I hear the words, The second year is harder,
come from a widow, her own year hard upon.
And true it is: no elegiac ardor
survives a pulse; we either die as well,
or leave our lost behind—a piece of us
gone with them, consecrating where they fell,
perhaps, but no more blown and beauteous
than she now: daughter, once my precious own—
slipped into starshine; still as any stone.

MB - 2/23/2023



Now

How dare it have been a year? I swore to moor
there in the river where you disappeared;
that there would be no moving on; no more
ambitions or becomings; nothing cleared;
the wreckage permanent; the current stilled;
time, ended. But now we’ve redone the garden;
are paying this year’s taxes; and have spilled
into another spring—hopeless of pardon
for oaths unkept; the battle not to learn
still raging; miles downstream from where I vowed
never to leave, now never to return;
the pear tree and the maple blooming loud—
all of the wide world greening and in leaf,
not razing, but replenishing my grief.

MB - 3/5/2023