perlerorneq

john martone

samuddo / ocean 2013

perlerorneq copyright © 2013 by john martone

samuddo / ocean

perlerorneq

perlerorneq – to feel the weight of life (inuktitut)

Someone moved the Guanyin I gave mom to my night table. J, I imagine. It rests on grandmother’s lace. The bed I’m sleeping in was my parents’ for the first decade of my life. The dresser next to the bed theirs as well, drawers shockingly empty now. J’s doing again, as she works through the grief of emptying out of the house. Back from the hospital tonight, sat at the kitchen table, and there was mom’s chair. She’ll never sit there again. And so the end of life recapitulates its beginnings. Once there were the first smile, first steps, first words; now there are the last time in a chair, in a house, the last coherent sentence. Her things enter the vast catalogue of no longer. And so she must understand, as she cries fearfully from her hospital bed into the emptiness – don’t let them take everything away.

there’s no hand hold

white knuckle gunwales this passage out of your mind

If only I could be sure of that. If only anyone else in the world could know for sure what

transpires in those handfuls of neurons or mind lying in bed or falling through space, unable to tell people from phantoms, pen from knife, or whether we aren’t all upstairs in one of

the houses that was once home.

Vasubandhu begins his Twenty Verses, likening human perception to how someone with poor vision mistakes floaters in the eyes for

phenomena outside. Mom sees strings and hairs everywhere and waves her hands to brush them away. What did Vasubandhu know?

She says we should sit on the stoop, go to the sandbox. She says she should go inside. She says she wants to go inside. She wants to be in her corner. Is the baby upstairs? Can we go to the farm again? Can we go home?

And we have done that.

front door maple branches right in your face

hospital floor-tiles same as our kitchen’s

don’t leave me in the woods

as if she were gretel – breadcrumbs

room so bright & sunny you don’t

remember a thing

This nursing-home evening, worn-down veneer (not hardwood floor) ends at dirty molding. You run a gauntlet of residents in wheelchairs down the hall to her room. The wall behind her bed needs to be washed. She gets four small drawers and a closet. Not even a shelf for knickknacks.

Roommate G has an oxygen compressor that runs all night. Mom wonders who’s cutting the grass. In disconnected words that sometimes aren’t, you hear how circumstantial and demented time is – the chance matters rising to sight, in talk, the turnings, contingent perceptions, images floating up from dreams, for so long.

talk about how she’d cook for you now you feed her

empty mirror soap dispenser fluorescence

mother sees fish floating in space – then they turn up in your dream

day a white curtain between 2 beds

what good this gate

brother sparrow

A good supper – most of a small cheeseburger, pudding, a chocolate donut. I have brought a

coloring book and some crayons (will this hurt her feelings?) but yet she can barely hold her crayon, making faint red dots on her handkerchief rather than the page. There’s also a book of stickers, but she can’t peel them from the backing. When dad arrives, he steps back at first to see us doing such things, but says nothing and I can see him taking it in. This is where we are going. He sits silently, watching the

roommate’s TV, which does not penetrate his deafness, though the people’s courtroom blares away, a preposterous judge ruling on some subsidized humiliation.

Weighed down with books in airport, shoulder bag won’t stay on, slips off, making me lose balance as I swing around trying to catch it.

his empty books too the weight

It’s just appetite, glutton, try as you may to convince yourself it’s something more. There’s that desire to find the book that will answer all questions – Traherne’s desire. There is that clinging to the vade mecum – Dhammapada, Hosai, Santoka with you everywhere, and there is the knowledge that the days of learning from books are pretty well over, that what’s left to do is something different.

the hurricaned

pine’s amber sun

mountain ridges ruled paper in the snow

a wood stove & no one home

(sandy, ii)

letting a dead branch hang there all winter

4’ tree stump good for table top

we were a family

carry stove-wood

listen to waves

4-inch wide white path to ocean no hand-hold but balance -- perfect – see

you’re no one – there

indelible your last name in collar & waistband

2-inch snow teeth chatter

in a warm bed

watercolor dinghy the white wall

needing paint

la lecon d’equitation

(cheap reproduction) on wall above wheelchair lift

imagine -- a thimble factory

those spaces!

birch trees & pine trees

we drift above a garden

It is like living in the same house with persons who have been mentally sick from birth. You are crazy if you imagine that you can find some long lasting peace or warmth or reason in this place.

--Josho Adrian Cirlea

Sometimes perfect bedlam – R’s Tibetan droning, C rocking forward a millimeter at a time in her wheel chair, panting home, home all the way; some other woman screaming in the shower, and one feels grateful the hall is well lit & warm & the nurses smiling.

her words out of nowhere another floral gown

that first sign—

it’s all you can do to fold a sheet of paper

between one spoonful & the next for getting

white frame first church

on hill to look inside – game for children’s fingers

sparkling stainless

wheelchair

it’s not leprosy still this mind losing fingers –

Her favorite flowers those silk ones in a black ceramic bowl. It was the story – you found them in at a Catholic convent in Nha Trang, the nuns saying nothing, smiling behind their Sprachgrill, and you could not enter the leprosarium. You brought the flowers back from half a world away, undamaged.

mother glows in this white light

the walls are talking

Because mom told you years ago she once got an orange for christmas, you dream a 1930’s

farmtruck bulging with oranges. A truckload of pickers, you one of them, climbs down from the bed, but the truck is still full of oranges, and you’re in a vast warehouse of oranges. Here’s a single bare segment on the ground. You pick it up and put it in your pocket for later --

so many

names so many people down this hall & one in white knows them all

one behind another – horses of chauvet

wheelchairs

going nowhere wants to hold on

(sandy, ii)

with mother gone trees fallen just as well

go on -- get the pine sap all over

pietà --

fallen pine caught in an oak

oak leaves hold on in subzero

such people

flying home eyes closed all the way

the heating fails & here you are

look at that (out of ink)

your glasses fog up

you’ve arrived

w/ alzheimer’s still knowing how cold

ayornartoq

(it can’t be helped)

A human being was created from nothing.

(inuit creation legend)

hospital room what’s left to imagine

a little oxygen & nothing to eat that winter

seabird-sounds

& a sea-green

heartbeat-monitor

how can we

not know

we are

strangers

fabrications

crystalline

refractions

when she

blinks us

away

at her

bedside

must be

we are

al

ready

ghosts

blows in

from far

side of

nowhere

woodwind

thin world

blue sky

you too

empty shell

odd shape

for broken seashell

human being

thread & needle

yellow plastic thimble

what were you doing?

of course you’re washing dishes when she dies

you find

her purple

slipper

shells

under

snow

along

the shore

snow

blowing

all day

won’t

settle

Day after she’s gone you head to florist to order

flowers & staggered by smells of her father’s

greenhouse 60 years ago can only say white

gladioli. They do not have enough flowers; there

could never be enough.

blowing snow

& ocean currents

mother now

blowing snow

& ocean currents

you’re a dream

barnacles grow from a stone in your hand

Cirripedia

In guilt’s overplus, shoes still soaked-thru, the

next day return to water’s edge & throw back

yesterday’s barnacle stone before it dries & inner

feathers can’t reach out to eat.

This is a new spot for you, where an ancient

paper-mill stream empties out into harbor, just

beyond the disused customs house. A raft lies

anchored a hundred yards out, piled high w/

lobster traps for your kin.

–But isn’t it always so – humble barnacle, all your

curled foot’s effort gone into staying put – sessile

– only to find (do you ever) that rock moves too,

tumbles about in great tides or even human

hands? And still you make your white facets – six

of them – perfect as snow blowing now in great

circles here. You stay inside & let go your instars.

now your

mother’s

gone

is this

silence

hers?

doe it

comfort

you?

a

light

touch

con

scious

ness

torn photo of that shack beside her coffin

her forehead’s chill

you almost topple

the coffin

a brass space-capsule with handles for bearers

three steps up

three steps down

no one trips

a small brass lozenge your universe

just things now

jostling inside

a coffin

white flower grave

whitecap harbor snow

no more glaucoma mom

buried now too late

to take a lock of hair

here’s a blizzard

mother gone forever now you’ve lost your keys

coda

after life

this

after

life –

harbor

side

hill

caves for

cliff

swallows

or

hermits

honey

combed

silence

you

en

counter

only

that

mother

&

children

on

their

hairpin

path

(any

stretch

of which

is

a bless-

ing)

but they

don’t

remem

ber you

nor

can you

say

which one

you

were now

they’re

gone