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In the Poem an Ocean
by Lisa Grace Rizzo
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Excerpts
Daughters
~ For Felicity Grace with whom I share a middle name.
I bear a thin red ribbon
around my wrist. This flows
from me to my mother
and back. I am
the eldest daughter of
an eldest daughter of
an eldest daughter.
I can never unwind
their embrace. Instead I
have chosen to cut my own
daughter free—the bond
never begun.
On my 38th birthday gazing
at a bowl of daffodils I
forced to bloom, I conceded
I would never have a child.
I shed no tears, but simply felt
hot wax seal the ribbon’s end.
I am a woman
who will never have children,
who never expected to fall in love
with the sweet hair and baby grasp
of her brother’s daughter.
Still I have no tears, only
now I understand what
I have foregone.
799-7632
The phone number that
rang in the blue crackerbox house
at 17827 Baker Avenue
in a manufactured town called Country Club Hills—
smack in the middle of Illinois prairie,
soy bean field behind our suburban lawn.
There were no hills.
The day we moved in, I sat on the bare tile floor,
long rectangle stretching out before me.
I felt crumbly inside,
crying for the house we had before—
the one with the cherry tree and grape vines.
It carried romance—white with green shutters,
stairs and dormer windows like a house from a book.
But no, we couldn’t stay there. We had to leave.
We always did— one house right after the other—
until the blue house. The one I remember most.
It was ugly but it lasted.
Comfort
Escaping the chaos of your illness I set off,
alone but for black birds chattering
and a mourning dove gray against gray branches.
The strain of your speech slurred by stroke
has weakened my cheerful resolve.
Among needle grass brown and sere,
a vine with burst seed pods.
I’m bothered that I don’t know its name—
the way you must feel when a word escapes
your tortured brain.
An ancient cottonwood tree stretches wide
against blue desert sky, reaching out to mountains
skirted by mist above the valley floor.
I am calmed by its unyielding survival,
its promise of spring leaves.
This solid comfort gives me courage
to turn back.
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