Duet for one voice/Linda Pastan

1
I sit at your side
watching the tides of consciousness
move in and out, watching
the nurses, their caps
like so many white gulls circling
the bed. The window
grows slowly dark,
and light again,
and dark. The clock
tells the same old stories.
Last week you said, now
you'll have to learn
to sew for yourself.
If the thread is boredom,
the needle is grief.
I sit here learning.

2
In place of spring
I offer this branch
of forsythia
whose yellow blossoms
I have forced.
Your tired mouth
forces a smile
in thanks. Outside
it is still cold;
who knows how long
the cold will last?
But underground,
their banners still furled,
whole armies of flowers wait.

3
I am waiting for you to die,
even as I try to coax you
back to life
with custards and soup
and colored pills I shake
from the bottle like dice,
though their magic
went out of the world
with my surgeon father,
the last magician.
I am waiting

for you to be again
what you always were,
for you to be there whole
for me to run to with this new grief–
your death- the hair grown back
on your skull the way it used to be,
your widow's peak the one sure landmark
on the map of my childhood,
those years when I believed
that medicine and love and being good
could save us all

4
We escape from our mothers
again and again, young
Houdinis, playing the usual matinées.
First comes escape down
the birth canal, our newly carved faces
leading the way like figureheads
on ancient slaveships,
our small hands rowing for life.
Later escape into silence, escape
behind slammed doors,
the flight into marriage.
I tought I was finally old enough
to sit with you, sharing a book.
But when I look up
from the page, you
have escaped from me.

[1985]