Miriam Bassuk

​Pushing Eighty
 
Well over the hump now. Each threshold a tiny timer light goes beep. More friends lost to dementia or cancer or the heart forgetting how to strum. I would never wish to live life backward. That’s where the potholes are, my father looming like an ancient devil. I forgive him for all the labored abuse and neglect, but there he is, a pop-up for me to wrestle down once again. Where is this going? I’ve lost the thread. Herein lies madness, the sucked back sounds, still trained on polite. Fear holds a bookmark when I imagine a future without my husband. He’s my lifeline, my support, my best friend, but someday, he will be…or I will be…
 
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Touching Back to My Father, Long Since Gone 
 
I rarely seek him out, he of such flame and fury, that I more often choose to distance myself. Taught me the beauty of numbers, how to solve math problems in elementary school, the magic of the Mobius strip. I recall his books, his lined notepad, his fondness for study, how he kept such odd hours, asleep after supper, awake at 5am. He knew all the subway stops in Philadelphia and which side the doors would open. I think back to the train ride we took together from Baltimore to Philadelphia, the chant of the conductor: Aberdeen,  Havre de Grace, Wilmington. Taught my brother and me the whole history of the Conowingo Dam as we crossed the Susquehanna River on the ride to his parent’s home. I slept through most of that lecture to block the drone of his teaching voice. Here, the razor’s edge of his temper and later abandonment almost gets forgotten. I believed in him. His words were law, emblazoned rules that set such tight boundaries. Never waste anything. Turn off the tap when you wash your hands. Never litter. I could never get it right, and now in my later years, I find we are so much alike. 
 
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Resilience
 
Mount St. Helens, 1980. I wasn’t around for that grand eruption that blanketed the region with ash, 540 million tons, over 22,000 square miles, buff-colored powder that blighted the sun. We visited the region shortly after that, coming from the east coast, where the air was still clear and crisp. All quiet on slopes that appeared like dark stubble from a man’s beard, frail tree trunks, leaning cliffside. It looked like a war zone, barren, bereft of life. The mind can’t grasp results like this from such cataclysmic force, but it mistakes barren landscape for sterile ground. Life force always regenerates. Pulses of new growth at work, like breath. Several years later, we returned. Same place, now so alive with green undergrowth, birds, chipmunks, green foliage, fertile, easy on the eyes.
 
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That mulberry tree 
 
flourished, florid with its full heart-shaped green leaves, tiny berries, too sour for sampling. Deep burgundy purple berries fell, stuck to the soles of our shoes and stained our gray dining room carpet. White sheets, hung on the clothesline with tight wooden pins, came back stained in the rain of bird poop. Blood on the seat of my shorts when I sat on the swing in her backyard, foreshadowed future blood. In all of this, such little concern for my mother’s constant cleaning.
 
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Piano Fingers
 
or so my mom called my lengthening fingers, their form long and lean, some might say, even skinny. I never played piano, never learned to read music. My fingers good for drumming, clapping, stroking, nestling against my husband’s body, sparking sensory pzazz from his soft skin. Serviceable fingers, until I contracted Raynaud’s syndrome, turning my fingers stiff blue, throbbing in cold weather. No amount of warm water could coax the circulation back until they loosened on their own. Winter finds my fingers balled into a fist to warm themselves in gloves, leaving empty knitted slots flapping in the breeze.
 
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Black Square 
 
after a painting by Patrick Wright
 
bounded by white frame evokes emptiness, depth of a black hole, an endless tunnel funneling down and down until you become Alice tumbling. Danger diverts you away from the final end-stop, or are you lost, memory limping and losing cells by the hour to avoid the terror of the unknown? Lurch for the border. sharp, edgy, not readily offering a hand-hold. Grip tighter, reach up, clutch the rim.
 
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Though originally from the east coast, Miriam Bassuk treasures her life in the Northwest.  Her daily walks inspire her with the teeming life of eagles, herons, and the occasional  sighting of Orcas. She has been published in The Journal of Sacred Feminine Wisdom,  Raven Chronicles, Borderless, and 3 Elements Review. She was one of the featured poets in the digital portion of the WA 129 project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate.