Deck the Halls 8: parents

Maryann Corbett · #1 12-12-2008, 07:55 PM

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Reading Aloud To The Corpses Of My Parents

The speed of light slows to a crawl—.
It falters—. Then it grabs a hold
of wheelchair chrome, of wedding gold—.
They’re barely burnished. That is all
the light I have to read by.

Half filled glasses in their hands
are tipping—almost spilling. Lapse
and loss have given birth to gaps
I need to fill. My voice expands
the silence it is freed by.

“Your father wants to hear you read—
from your own book.” So I brewed tea.
And gladly silenced the tv.
Their eyes closed almost instantly
the moment I’d begun.

Yet if I stop, they soon protest,
they’re wide awake with loving smiles—
a Pharaoh and his Queen beguiled
by prospects of eternal rest:
“Just read us chapter one.”

It can’t be true my book’s that boring.
Her dropped jaw. His tilted head.
They cannot possibly be dead,
I tell myself, I hear them snoring.
Such peace, I can’t deny them.

The force of breath descends to drift—.
It fades—. Then steadies to a wheeze.
And in that all but failing breeze
two sails too briefly sigh, and lift
a voice to lullaby them.

(Massapequa, Long Island—2008)

. .

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