The Spell of the Leaves

Her husband left her suddenly. Then it was autumn,
And in those first, crisp days of a new life,
Each morning she would watch her son, a boy of seven,
Yawn before mounting the steps, glinting like a sea,
When the doors of the school bus opened,
And then she would dress, leaving the back way,
And hearing or overhearing the screen door close
Behind her, always with the same, indifferent swish.
At that hour the frost on the lawn still held
Whorled fingerprints of cold, as if the cold had slept
There. Then she would climb, she told me,
On the wrong side of the small, open car,
And sit quite still, an unlit cigarette in her hand,
And wait for him to come out and drive her
To work, as always. The first two times it happened
She was frightened, she said, because, waiting for him,
Something went wrong with Time. Later, she couldn't
Say whether an hour or only a few minutes
Had passed before she realized she didn't
Have a husband. Then she would lift herself
Awkwardly over the brake & gear shift, spilling
Gently backward into the driver's seat,
Her legs still on the wrong side a moment,
In mottled sunlight. For a second I almost glimpse
Her knees, slender & raised slightly like
A lover's. I know it's wrong to stare at them.
At this moment she is all alone; at this moment,
Because her mistake is so pathetic, she's crying.

Then she stops waiting.
The car pulls out of the drive
And onto the street forever. The weeks pass, & then
The months; then the years are blending into
Tables set for two, & even anger dies.
On Sundays, hiking, the boy finds wildflowers.
They look them up in a field guide before
She places them, like stillness itself, in a vase—
Cloisonné, its gray background lustrous, lacquered.
There is a line both of them know by heart,
And the boy repeats it idly, a sentence composed
In madness while its poet sat, as still
As any flower, in his cell, hearing beyond it
The cries of the asylum, & beyond that, nothing,
Nothing, though the carriages of London keep
Whispering through its hushed streets forever,
Past the silently clinging chimney sweep
In the mild drizzle of 1756;
And the poet, alone with his holy cat, watches
A dung beetle, "Whose sight is precious to God,"
Scurry across wet stone, while the boy is chanting:
"The Right Names for Flowers Are Hush'd in Heaven."
" 'Still in Heaven' … Christopher Smart," she adds.
She adds half a bay leaf to the simmering stew.

But when I think of her, nothing has happened yet.
It is the moment before she remembers
Her husband isn't there, the moment before
The Indian summers of her bare legs appear,
Then disappear, the week before the maples'
Yellowing leaves lining her street all turn
To the colors of horses: roans, sorrels, duns,
Chestnuts, bays, blacks, then a final
Liver-white quilt of appaloosa
Unraveling over the first, brief snow,
Then the zebra shades & short days of winter.
When I think of her, she's still sitting there,
On the wrong side of the car, intent, staring
As her thought collects in pools, yet keeps
Widening until, now, it casts its spell:
And then the scene is one of great stillness ripening,
Enlarging, spreading to include the boy, who sits
Like Stillness Itself above the graffiti carved
Into his desk by students who are older now,
And wilder. It is five minutes into his morning recess,
And the boy will not go out. He sits alone,
Listening, the classroom windowless—& he knows
The moment when the stillness finds his father
With his shoulders stooped, unmoving, in another state.
The father simply stands there now, a teapot whistling
In the cramped kitchen of his studio; he gazes
Straight ahead into what seems to him a valley
Filling with snow until the end of time.
He's seeing things. In front of him there's only
A white cupboard, some dishes, an ash tray displaying
The name of a casino. But the woman won't relent:
The spell's hush is on the boy's pencil in its tray;
It's on the desk & dry leaves pinned to the walls. …
The boy listens, & does not listen, both hears
And does not hear the older students, those
Already in junior high, lounging outside
In the corridor, acknowledging each other—
Their whispers are the high, light rustling of leaves
Above the vagrant he passes on the way home,
The one intent on sleeping this world away,
A first chill entering the park as he shoves
His chapped hands deeper between his knees—
The boy watches this as if in the sleep of the other. …
All of this three years before the father
Hears a secret club of voices, steps onto an ark
Of stories, floating, three times each week,
Past him, through him, admitting its powerlessness,
And God. Forgive me, I keep watching them now,
In this moment two days after the father has slumped out,
I keep waiting for the next thing to happen,
And that is the problem: nothing happens, nothing
Happens at all. It is as if Time Itself
Sticks without knowing it in this wide place
I had mistaken for a moment, sticks
Like the tip of the father's left forefinger
To the unwiped, greasy, kitchen countertop.