BY JAN HAAG
1986
DORIS SOPHIE PEPPLER SMITH,
with nothing in her suitcase,
left for heaven. She'd have liked
to
make each of you one last
strawberry waffle with cream,
or real maple
syrup,
but her flight came too early.
With warmth and love we have
made
you some of her favorite
cakes. Have a cake for Doris:
rich,
like her heart, and sweet.
Her favorite flower was
the wild, blue
forget-me-not.
Have a wonderful journey,
we'll not forget you, Doris.
DORIS
12-20-97
Doris, Mother, mourning,
forever --
Devayani seldom
thinks of you.
And yet, if she tells a
story
or reads your death party poem
she cries.
She bows
quite frequently, quite gaily
to you, there asleep, sprinkled
among
the azaleas,
and to Father, under the cherry tree,
fresh in her
walk,
almost every morning,
in the glory of the
Arboretum.
Often chanting, Devayani
strolls,
long-legged,
loose-limbed, by,
cheeks aflame with the cold
winter air
off to commune in cyberspace;
at last, so glad to be
alive,
having lived to the age of Websites,
as if she were born to
be
a black widow on the Web,
passing, too, multi-level
dwellings
of the spiders,
visible in the fog,
but gone now,
in the biting cold
of winter.
If it snows, she'll cry
again,
Devayani will cry
thinking of the strolls
in the
snow,
with you, Mother,
pouring her troubled heart
into the
warm receptacle of
your understanding.
Not until a Mother dies,
Devayani found out the hard way,
the only way,
that with a
Mother's passing
passes from the earth
the only
understanding,
deep and profound,
that she would ever
know.
The love of a Mother
-- warm, strolling in the
snow,
mittened and listening,
laughing in the illuminated
night,
knowing Devayani,
flesh of her flesh --
reveals
itself, year by year now,
in unexpected ways,
like the thousand
petalled lotus of the heart,
teaching the loss.
Teaching, too, that
it is tolerable,
and seldom remembered,
for it is kept hidden,
like a comment
in cyberspace,
as it grows bigger, like a
Website,
as intricate and beautiful
as fog shrouded, bejeweled
webs.
O, you'd take it out
and look at it more often,
Devayani,
if it didn't make you cry.
Mother wove a web of
remembance
strong enough to catch forever,
an aging fly, like
you.
Happy Birthday, Doris -- 91 years today
since your own
gift of a mother.
Do your almost-twelve-years-seperated-molecules,
still and often cry?
Devayani will probably see
the
Millennium
you wanted so to see --
she'll think of
you.
DORIS SOPHIE
1984?
You have a name, a soft kiss,
a smile. You are small, round,
like
a dumpling, delicious as
brown sugar syrup made
with
butter. They told you dessert
was nourishing. It is
good,
sweet, warm, but essential fuel
is missing at the
center.
Though skyscrapers could be se-
cured by your
unchangingness,
though Greenwich could set clocks by
your
constancy, you never
use your name. Once as a girl,
long ago, you
stepped into
business, but now, frying the
chicken, peeling
potatoes
you are just sugar syrup,
an apple dumpling, warm
from
the oven, sweet with whipped cream,
eaten, forever hungry.
You never use your name.
Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
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BY JAN HAAG