I don’t know what the doctors had to say
but I was spotted like a leopard with scars of impetigo.
Grandmom’s lips aimed with her mighty affection
on my newly hatched self and encircled the omphalos place
that abdomen scar where a cord once connected me,
graciously, to my sub life.
So I came into the world stained and as the story goes
I was attached to the wild, kept an eye out for fox
and pheasant from the woods beyond our back yard.
But truly I was tame.
Mother said I could sit quietly through anything
though she was a ranter herself until the day she died
when her mouth stayed open, no sound uttered,
perhaps to let the spirits fly in or out
depending upon mood I suppose and I could sense
something way down in her throat
that cried for belonging as I cupped her head
during the exchange of inside and out.
I wanted to inhale something of her
or see rapture or a whiff of the exiting.
But then the undertaker person came
and asked me to leave the room
that was the last I saw of my mother.
Today, almost seven years gone by,
the wind howls so hard, snow whipping through
as though the dead are rattling
to the ebb and flow of this unkempt world
where for me rituals make a comeback
in my inevitable countdown.
I do the morning dishes,
make the bed, inspect my amaryllis,
marvel at its fierceness for blooming.
If I lean in, close my eyes, I can feel the buzz
vibrate right down to the omphalos
the forever place. Today could be the first day
when everything is just right.
Carol Seitchik is author of the poetry collection, The Distance From Odessa (Atmosphere Press). Her poems have been published in: A Feast of Cape Ann Poets (Folly Cove Press), The Practicing Poet (Terrapin Books), Culture and Identity (Thepoetmagazine.org) and most recently Tide Lines an anthology of Cape Ann Poets (Rockport Press).
