Imagine my grandmother dancing…

Alice Chambers, daughter of a mother tough and so severe,
my grandmother, my mother’s mother,
born 1917—her 25 would be 1942; also imagine
“A.J. Sylvester,” the name my mom only vaguely recounts to me.

Imagine “Moonlight Serenade” straining through a vacuum tube radio…

Somehow I think of him as Sylvester,
maybe Mr. Sylvester; I’ve never seen him.
I’ve seen his handwriting.
He died in Pearl Harbor; the navy named a ship after him.

Imagine the swell and sway of the clarinets as he held her…

After she married—Garnel Poppleton, a nice boy from church—
Sylvester kept writing, but that mother so severe
hid every letter until after he was dead
and it was too late, and that broke Alice apart.

***

Imagine the white on a mountain, framed by a kitchen window…

I remember her from her garden’s raspberries
frozen, fresh, and crisp; I remember the bite
of sweet and ice (she’d often pour milk over);
Alice Poppleton, my co-conspirator to decadence.

Imagine my grandmother folding laundry alone in the kitchen, in front of the fridge with only a radio playing…

I remember her from her letters;
she’d always tuck a dollar bill stiff from the bank,
and I didn’t mind when mom made me write back
because that meant yet another letter would come.

Imagine my grandmother’s face, deadpan, calling out for me as
Brian David Thedell Luke Skywalker throughout my fifth Summer…

I remember her—in the house down from the mountain
with her own private garden of berries
as she smoulders through life with that
nice boy from church, the radio, and
the pile of letters in the back of the guest closet.

***

Imagine hands, soft with Rose Milk lotion and a lifetime of work,
finally at rest on a quilt…

I can’t help but feel a kinship with Sylvester,
and I wonder what I’d call myself today
if a certain Japanese pilot had failed his mission,
had left someone alive to write back to.

Imagine “Moonlight Serenade” remastered on CD, ringing through
the nursing home bedroom…

By 2001 I was 25; I called her sometimes, in spite
of all the awkward, confused pauses, the mumbling of aging.
Then I learned that the nurses read my emails aloud
for her; it hurt me less to write than to talk.

Imagine my grandmother, dancing across all those decades…

I didn’t visit my grandmother’s death bed;
I’d grown unforgiving at her and her daughter so severe.
Now as I sit with my regret, I wonder if hers tasted as frozen and crisp
that day she changed from Alice Chambers to Alice Poppleton.

I said I didn’t understand
so God told me again—
growing old happens instantly.
But it felt so much longer,
like forever, I begged.
Of course it did to you, my boy,
he chuckled, sneered,
of course it did to you…

1.
I am at the beach again
despite the doctor’s warnings
to stay out of sun
because of my condition.
I was here near this water
—this salty world-womb—
the last time something in life couldn’t fit,
when nothing but waves and sand
made any sense.

Before that, and before I left home,
I came to this beach when I was
still young, if being young is the inability
to comprehend the end of a Summer,
the inability to doubt that a throw of the dice
will always win an invite to a party,
a weed connect, or an easy lay…

And here time is water and water time
as it carves and traces its ridges in
beach rock like the lines around my eyes;
it clumps and dents the smooth sand
like the wrinkles that mottle the back of my hand…

2.
I have seen the seaside tribes approach, recede:
young military men, college co-eds, young
college men, middle aged barflies
munching tacos from that hole-in-the-wall
just two blocks down from the boardwalk;
even the old woman who walks her
two pugs each morning at seven
remains somehow mysterious
against the horizon of ocean…

So I drifted down the pier
until the gulls in the air
and the bite of salt on my tongue
muted the humming waves beneath my feet.
I saw a gull with just one leg
and wondered what desperate adventure
had claimed his wholeness; yet
the image I caught on my cellphone
has no pity, just pride—
as if he knows he can still stand in the wind,
still dive into the same ocean, intrepid,
as if a throw of the dice could never
cost him the rest of his body.

3.
But I myself grow more timid
over just the high sun at noon
again because of my condition;
it could be any condition, I guess
it doesn’t matter, as often
being old is just being able to remember
a Summer where I couldn’t imagine being
too sick to do a simple thing.

The doctor told me that my body
is attacking itself; I should be very ill,
according to my blood-work, but apparently
I am lucky, only wounded just-barely;
so anyway it couldn’t hurt
to lose a little weight,
to go the gym sometimes, and above all
to stay out of the sunlight—UV—
as that somehow roils
the demon in my blood.

And after the fit of nervous laughter
in the clinic parking lot,
after I realize the algebra of my illness
equals two or three toxic little pills,
poisons that choke off my blood’s royal guard
and soothe the screams beneath my skin,
after all that I feel
a bit of pity, but mostly pride—
because I know I can still dive
deep into waves sliding beneath me,
because I can still feel
dice, hard and warm, in my hand…

[NOTE: This is a new edit of the poem found here.]