Three Poems by Nelly W.
“I Still Remember that House”
Took my current paramour there the other day. We stood in the gravel
driveway of the church and I pointed past the gazebo
to the grave of the Shih Tzu I brought to prom*.
How many times have we given that house Puck’s “Through the House”?
Do you remember? Or a Rumi poem prompts a tear to read it accurately?
We were all married there. Nana would wear the wedding dress,
the one my mother wore, the one I wore
to the end of the driveway for a picture to send as Cheesecake
to the Colonel during WWII. Ostentatious and humorous.
“Good enough for Benson” was the family expression for
‘no need to gussy up’, not
Sunday best, “Good enough.”
I still remember that house, the one where I first came to Vermont
at eight months, and every house which will never live up to it yet.
It’s a sleep-aiding technique to try to recreate and remember
every bedroom, but there’s not one of us, even those who do not dream,
who have not visited it again in their sleep.
*Baby Princess Astronaut Wraparound Splotch. You tried to resuscitate her mouth to mouth. She died in our apartment on July 11. Persephone was born 22 July. The Dog Star rise.
“How Did It Happen?”
They only know time after the Big Bang, not before, not during
The four causes in Aristotle without the watchmaker
How did it happen, now that there is a one-in-one chance of it happening?
What were the conditions? The scientist, the sleuth, and mendicant prefer
the journey to the goal. Is it time I write my own Sherlock Holmes-lore
story about it? The first year’s answer was, “I had help.” A lot of help was true.
I had to have the whole job done, the whole rehaul, the whole recall: the real
“I’m gonna be a brand new bug” meets Book of Job. I had read everything back then.
How did it happen? It was amazing that it hadn’t yet happened for me. Who better
than me to have it happen to? Did I know when it happened or did it escape
my notice? Did I just stare at it until it changed color, an over-focus, not manic.
My friend said he’d been to 58 meetings in his life, I had done that in five weeks.
Is it happening again? Happening continually, or happened? I still can watch the
Golden Girls to help me through an evening. The obsession disappeared, evanesced, continues to fade. First year, fraught vegan cheesecake. Last year it was popsicles. This year
I may bring popsicles again. I don’t know how it happened, but it seems to me
I am now entirely different. Did I get exchanged, renewed, discarded, rebuilt?
Like getting a recall on all my parts. I had so many people working on me:
A very loose jalopy with the semblance of a cohesive girl.
“I Just Don’t Know”
Socrates said, all I know is I don’t know.
Smartest person in the room may well be the most ignorant,
and open, willing to learn, willingness
readiness is all, right? Heard that before, right?
When Peter and Peter’s wife took
me and my shih tzu on that canoe
We mused about who had taken these paths before
I said the Old English word for “Ocean” is “Whale Road”
The professor had claimed he knew Johnny Depp,
Extolling his virtue as best actor, because he was most vapid
An empty vessel, entirely open, the perfect instrument to
let a role inhabit him. Aren’t we filled with knowledge in the same way?
Like a haunting? Do we possess knowledge or are we possessed by it?
I’m coming to know my preconceptions deserve to be challenged.
The liability I once counted as strength was in extrapolating,
Seeing the chess moves ahead,
summing all y’all up so that I may isolate.
Peter says, “put your demons on the PA
so you can be party to their deliberations”
Jeff says, “put your demons on the witness stand
so you can cross examine them”
I can quote all sorts, it can penetrate
my skin like reverse sunscreen.
I am learning listening over editorializing,
although I like to curate memories, contextualizing them
without glorifying them. I can listen now,
but I just don’t know, I synthesize.