Love Poem by Linda Gregerson

Love Poem

 

1.

 

Once, my very best darling, the sea

  and the land were all one mass

 

and the light was confused and hadn’t found

  a place to rest. And, Megan, love,

 

my sister’s eyes were not yet there to hold it all

  together since she hadn’t yet been born so when

 

the world dropped out from under us and no one,

  not the on-calls with their CAT scans, not

 

the sovereign souls who monitor

  the twilit room where newborns come to die

 

or live, when no one could tell us if you

  would be one of the lucky ones able to

 

walk and speak and only this, the one

  unstinted blessing fate had given us to

 

give you was a sister in whose eyes you were

  the sun and moon, it meant we all no matter

 

what befell us all

  had solid ground.    Pity the part

 

we think we do on purpose.

 

     2.

 

When Karen was dying and books had shut

  their doors to her, she could still make out the

 

puzzle of knit and purl. I’m keeping it simple,

  she said, although the pattern

 

emerging beneath her fine hands did not

  look simple to me. An

 

A. A B. An alphabet. And all in the single

  color, milk. The letters distinguished

 

by only the altered stitchwork so

  the nursery would be beautiful.

 

Whichever of the children has a baby first,

  she said, she loved

 

the future, no matter she wouldn’t be there.

 

     3.

 

Second-born. As fateful as the transit

  to light and air or so you’ve often tried

 

to teach me I will never properly understand.

  But I know

 

how the hair at your temples curls in

  summer when the air is moist. As if

 

she’d been returned to me.

  I must have had some under-the-radar

 

notion even then when we were children how

  that little looseness threw

 

my petty masteries in the shade. And so

  the joy of it was lost on me. Till you.

 

I’m the only person living who

  remembers her childhood curls.