Pamela Sutton
Standing at the Gates of the Arctic
The Cherry tree
has shaken off its blossoms.
Where there should be new leaves,
branches are dripping
with red enamel bees.
Your other family
kept me away from your death bed.
I will never know your last words.
Grinding the bones of bees
in the mortar and pestle of grief,
they said: “here, taste this.”
Instead, you visit me each night
and we discuss portals
to the Dawn before Sunrise.
You appeared again last night:
Bare and muscular, holding out
snow-drenched rose petals
as your other family looked on.
I stood on the marble stairs
to your house: door unhinged.
Your other family did not allow our child and I
to attend the ceremony where they poured your ashes
into the Schulykill River. How could they know
that river is an open artery of my heart? How
could they know we made love there
blanketed by cherry blossoms? How could they
know that is where we took our daughter to feed
the snow geese? Or, that I stand there each
night waiting for Time to bend;
for ice to embrace the cherry blossoms;
waiting for the river to freeze over so I can skate
all the way to Eternity where butterflies rain
into your open hands—standing
at the Gates of the Arctic.
What I Want for My 60th Birthday
Everything. I want it all back.
I want to open the door to my double-Trinity
which smells of fresh bright yellow paint.
I want the cats, Louis and Clarke, to greet my
daughter, who is still just 4 years old. I want
her wearing a St. Peter’s school blazer,
with the crest of the cross and key.
I want 3:30 sunlight hitting the stained glass
window above the door mantle;
making a rainbow on the virgin wood floor,
felled from an 1820 forest; uneven against
my back, but I don’t care because I’ve made
my child into an airplane, one that will never
crash while I control gimbal and yaw: just laughter
and spins; gentle landings and make-believe
places—like her drawings I’ve taped all over
the fridge. We hear the doorbell,
and know it’s her father, so we race
to the door to see what he’s brought over.
This time it’s a child’s rug with rockets and planets
which fits perfectly in her room on the 2nd floor.
It matches the four orange fish he brought
over last week: John, Paul, Ringo, George.
Yes, I even want the fish back. And I want Emily
showing off her latest song on her 1/8th violin.
I want him, again, choking back tears
over the music and miracle of our child as he lights
a cigar and walks out the back porch, past
the blue Ulysses butterfly encased in glass.
I want him out there smoking and admiring
the Dutch wooden shoes I turned into planters
the way they do in the Netherlands. I want
marigolds blooming everywhere: vermilion, orange, gold.
I want Steve back, not just hearing his voice, or touching his
black curls smelling of whiskey. I want him in my bed
in my arms in that double-trinity on Hall Street:
not watching him stagger up a steel, industrial staircase
–so many flights–to a forbidding office with shut windows.
There is my desk but I’m not there; I’m just watching,
and locking windows against the greedy angels with their
bitten-down nails. As always he slings a briefcase over
my empty chair. In every dream the briefcase carries
a cryptic note. But this time it says: “Keep everything.”
