Mother-in-Law
for Marlene, 1936-2009
How she enjoyed putting me in my place.
When I complained of bugs in Tennessee,
when I bragged there were none in L.A.:
that’s because you’re surrounded by concrete.
I walk Lincoln Blvd. where nothing blooms,
a world of asphalt and glass. Her diagnosis rose
like mosquito nights on Chickamauga Lake.
I miss pickerelweed, the sudden breeze,
metallic sip of Tennessee water from the sink.
No humidity here. She had six months to live.
A Japanese holly pine reaches over the driveway
like the hand of God, dense as a cityscape
and evergreen. She was everything to me,
both dock line and boat. I float this January,
her long gone. My marriage, too—such slow
collapse under the weight of what could
not root. The holly splits our old concrete,
a persistence I’ve never known. Mosquito eggs
on urban heat, small lives trying to endure.
What places do we put each other in?
Candice M. Kelsey