A poem about lavender and love and a visit to the lake house with a campfire at the end and more love.

Ode to the End of the World

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Ode to the end of the world

Oh, how can I write about the end of the world when this year’s lavender,
lush with so much rain, keeps drawing me from the page
out-of-doors
where the garden is
bursting/teeming/overflowing
and so green;

When this branch of lilac that we cut, six years ago
– from the hedge
behind the house where my daughter balanced equations
with her math tutor -
has become a tiny tree;
knee-high, still not quite ready to bloom;

When the tomatoes are plumping on the vine
and the cucumbers that my sister-in-law drove here
- all the way from Long Island -
have flowered.

There is so much to live for:
the smell of coffee
The micro-burst mist
of lemon zest
when I slice through the peel.
The gift of cream
and this
thyme that crept back around the stone that my husband placed on top of it.

I am not afraid of dying
-not afraid of dissolving back to light:
It’s forgetting that frightens me
-losing my place,
dropping this thread
that I’ve been passing over and under these other threads,
for so long:
The book,
the marriage,
this garden;
and the culling of memory for this poem.

On the day when the meteor strikes,
the tidal wave crashes
and lightning shatters the sky
-what will become of memory:
the sunlight flickering on the lake;
the dragonflies darting;
the mossy scent of algae pooling in the cove.

The wind, rustling the leaves
in the afternoon;
as we lay
on the grass
or the bed
on a white cotton sheet.
—-

And what of all of these books
that I’ve read? And
The Sunday Times and
driving with Dad to get the bagels, the cream cheese, the lox.
What of the smell of turpentine, the piano recital playing on WQXR,
as my mother in her studio,
in the white cotton shirt that she wore as a smock,
smeared a canvas with Gesso;
the smoke curling from her cigarette as it balanced
on the edge of a red coffee can,
splashed with yellow paint?

And the bottles that she dug out of the hill behind the house—
the green, the blue, the brown ones.
They circled the kitchen on a high shelf,
like a necklace,
refracting light,
arranged in a pattern
that only she could read.

The world pours through us;
lifts us from the sandy bottom and tumbles us,
head over heels,
boiled in a wave of broken shells,
we flicker, light through water,
gurgling over brook stone;
lakes.

We are all of us lakes, mossy-bottomed and deep,
and so mysterious.

II

“You really can't hang on to anything,” Suzi said. She was calling from her family’s summer house, which had been sold last week, and she’d driven over there to say goodbye. “It’s all just pouring through you."

She'd walked through each room – the curtains her mother had hung were still on the windows, the silverware still in the drawers. Then, she came out to the lake, walked out on the dock and lay down. She called me as I was writing this poem about the end of the world.

“It is what it is,” Suzi said. but her voice broke when she said it.
“I know,” I agreed.
But I didn’t know.
I don't know.

I keep feeling for touchstones
-the swing on the oak tree,
my sister running out of the house behind me;
the chipmunk that I captured every evening in a waxed paper cup.

This is what happens at the end of the world.
We reach for the things that matter:
the photo album,
the journal,
the feather that my father sent,
the special sweater.

We make piles,
sorting our marbles into groups
-glassies, cloudies, clears.

Later,
when it’s all over
and we’re sitting in the silence
stripped bare
washed clean
new again,
will we find, in our pockets,
these round and polished stones?

Will we remember,
feeling their smooth surfaces with our fingers,
Or will we wonder,
What were they for?

III

It happens so fast
the coming and going
the being and doing
the packing and departing.

When my mother sold my childhood home
the moving van arrived
before she was ready.

There were paintings still in the cellar and an old wooden trunk filled to the top with shells. We sat on the floor counting white stones. The treasure of a lifetime.

What will you keep?
What will you stuff in your pockets, your purse, the trunk of your car
on the day they announce the end?

IV

The floorboards of these houses
where we walk
these impermanent rooms
that seem so sure.

“There, in that house, there was always time,” Suzi said. “Generations of celebration – and also not celebration. Whatever happened here, a lot of it was good.”

V

My mother would drag me to museums:
The Met
The Modern
The Guggenheim, which spiraled ‘round and round.
She studied the paintings;
I held onto Beth’s stroller,
dreaming of the cream cheese and jelly sandwich I’d been promised if I was good.
The Natural History,
the dinosaur bones,
and the blue whale suspended from the ceiling.
I remember:
counting the rings in the wedge of the redwood tree;
and, at the planetarium, the galaxies spiraling over my head.

VI

You can’t really hold onto anything.
The rain sp-lash-ing.
The smell of bacon.
Soft-boiled eggs
Salt and pepper
Music.
The red maple in the back yard that flickers red, copper, red copper
as the wind rustles the papers on my desk.
Anything . . .

the weight of my newborn son in my arms,
his tiny hand on my breast, patting me as he fed;
the swirl of hair on the top of his head. And then, so soon, his sister was there, too.

And that moment in the car, in the dark — it was Christmas Eve— when my 16-day-old daughter, in her stretchy red sleep suit, looked deep into my eyes.

We are all tumbling
head over heels
in a rush
broken shells, beach glass and blue marbles.

VII

Lately, my husband has been leaving me gifts– branches of blossom: dogwood, lilac, and this pink one that has shed every petal onto the pages of the cookbook I left open on the counter.

VIII

What is it for?
This pink yarrow that Katie and I planted
last week, in a shiny red pot
by the door.

This stone, grey-speckled with bird prints
which I found on the beach at Cuttyhunk Island
– 22 years ago.

I was pregnant with Katie. Max held my hand. Beth was there, and (the other) Kate and Natalie, my mother’s best friend. I remember carrying the stone back to the cottage; packing it into the suitcase between the swimsuits and towels.

IX

The rush of the match, the spiral of the flame; the crackle and crash as the log collapses to ash; the song my friends are singing, their faces, flickering into and out of focus in the pitch black night.

My daughter’s friend, Isabelle, brings her newborn son, the first baby of the next generation, to sleep beside the fire. Adam, 21, leans over, touches the baby’s cheek. “He’s so real,” Adam says.

Over our heads, the moon, fingernail, crescent, pearl.
Light, and the way that it pools beneath the lampshade as I write.
The gentle and persistent hum inside of my body.
Life and how we cling to it, so desperately,
knowing, as we do, that it will end.

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Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash