by Deirdre Kessler
Mrs. MacKinnon called, nervous,
“The fence is falling down,” she says,
“A new one...before winter?”
“Is it customary,” I ask,
“for neighbours to share the cost
of a shared fence?”
She sighs, relieved
She does not have to explain
she has never travelled to foreign
countries, knows language with strangers
only for accidents—
a husband felled by a stroke,
too heavy to lift from the front stair
Mrs. MacKinnon has put up a chain-
link
fence
where turned posts were planted
by her husband
He was young once, like the spruce
boards of the fence,
oozing sap
She has been a widow long enough
to have hung curtains
between then and now
She hires young men to rake
leaves, build a fence,
cut the patch of grass
where the old vegetable garden lay
A jar of pickles,
her mother-in-law’s recipe, waits
on a shelf in the cellar
I am raking leaves
by Mrs. MacKinnon’s chain-
link
fence
It is a soft, overcast day
How quickly tansy, nightshade,
young maples will make a solid
hedge again
This the thought as
I kneel,
hands crumbling dark earth
In July I moved the woodpile
A tan and green frog escaped,
surprised, tumbled by hardwood blocks,
home caved in, hurt
I caught it in work gloves,
saw it would heal, carried it
to the jungle along Mrs. MacKinnon’s
old board fence
Slowly, then, I unbuilt
the tumbled woodpile,
two and a half cords,
eight more tan and green frogs
eight gloved resettlements
I am on my knees,
hands crumbling moist earth
the day is soft, overcast—
And I remember:
I must pick up the children!
It is late, school will be over!
And now I am in the school, searching
for my children
I open my mouth to speak,
to call them, and
there is an explosion, felt and heard
I am thrown and throw
myself to the floor
My right ear drum bursts—
a cartoon drawing, torn edges
where a rock has pierced paper
I calculate what has happened,
what can be done to restore this ear
to normal. All these things happen
at once—the explosion,
the roof open to the dome of sky,
the sky filled with reds, whites, heats,
my hand holding together the back of my ear
A bone pokes through the right side
of my temple. “This is it,” I think,
words slow as punctuation
And then survival spreads sure,
a wave washes every cell
Everyone has been thrown
to the floor, everyone
has burst open in small places
I know about exits and stampedes,
know about moving quickly
Here on a drafting table
is a blueprint of intelligence
overlaid with a map of experience—
this is the way to enter,
this is where to leave,
here is pain, and over here
is death
For a moment the air thickens,
darkens, swirls,
shimmering and black
But awareness undamaged
Everywhere is perfect calm, perfect hearing
And everywhere are images unchanged:
Forests with birds,
Backyards with children
A patch of snow
Mayflowers
I lie holding my body together
my cheek against the earth
as though it were our old dog—
a golden stray, fourteen years together,
her sweet glide into death in my arms—
and before this dream ends
I have time enough
to say goodbye
