Poetry By Alfred Fournier
Memory of Song
After Li-Young Lee’s “Love Succeeding”
I don’t know what God expects of us,
but my father in profile, head nodding
as he begins to snore in the chair
of the waiting room
is a fox running along a river’s shore.
My face buried in some magazine,
hoping no one sees or hears him.
Can’t imagine how hard he works
just to keep us alive, plodding forward
through the shadow of Mom’s death.
She was like a mountain for the shadow
her absence cast over us. Like a swallow in life,
dipping swift and lithe above the river of our family,
its banks now cluttered with flotsam
after the ruinous flood.
There was a song she sang when I was young,
before the door she was made to pass through.
I don’t remember the melody or words, just the lilt
of her voice as she fluttered through the house,
straightening its crooked corners for Dad’s arrival.
He was the hero, star of the show,
anointed guest returning with meat and bread.
Once a bright star because of her, now
a tired workman dozing in a doctor’s office,
me with a bout of flu or something.
We never understood the role Mom played,
how we revolved around the gravity
of her movements, morning sun glowing
around the edges of her frame. Ambiance
of her hum from the kitchen.
Linchpin, lodestone, leaving behind
a weary man, an embarrassed child,
an empty house with its crooked corners
and the mystery of a music
I struggle to remember.
I Never Wanted to Own My Life
To pull it to my chest, wrestle it to the ground.
It felt safer to keep a little distance between us.
Short-term-rental moments in the sun,
willing to forget myself
in cloud shapes across the blue.
Always to return
to the stern conditions of the lease,
the unforgiving landlord’s sigh.
His look of disapproval in the mirror.
I’ve watched others step into their bodies
as if born to play the lead—
discard the rules and make their own.
At high school senior skip day
I spied their shirtless and bikinied antics
with wonder and envy
from the roof of the party van
and knew I would never cross the sand
to join them.
I’ve skirted the edges of the arena
waiting for the concert to begin.
Taken love a dozen times to the brink
of consummation.
Scraped my plate into the trash bin.
I learned too young that love is a heartbeat
away from disappearing.
That the worlds we construct are fictions
of our own design. I’ve kept my imagination
bound and gagged in the basement
for her own protection.
Built myself a shack far from the beach,
though gleaming bodies still trouble my dreams.
Whether we own or lease,
we’ve only one chance to make a home in this world.
We shape a life through intention or denial.
After long decades, I’ve landed on the shore again.
The beach is cool and deserted,
except for the gulls with their cries overhead
and the endless roll of the sea
kissing the beach.
