Year One, and: The Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Abstract

Year One, and: The Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Marsha Rabe (bio) Year One Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,For he tames it, that fetters it in verse. —John Donne This is my mother's first yeardead. The poppies she cheer-led into bloomlast June now rupture the groundwithout her, their shrill colors as conceitedas popes on the Vatican balcony, bobbingand waving, a line of splendidLeos, Pius one through twelve,fat Johns, gaunt Johns, seeminglyinterchangeable, seemingly eternal.This is her first Christmas Eve—no Santa.This is her first Easter—no eggs, no resurrection—Her first Mother's Day—no guilt. Ha!Her first birthday. But who's counting?She is rhododendron now as much as wind chime,squirrel as much as green garden hose,grass grub, trowel. I love my new calendar, [End Page 178] how its days repeat and rhyme, amassing her absence.Today I will put my shovel into the earth, feel the dirtyield like flesh, hear the clang of metal on rockas if the rock were bone. I will extract the rockand in the void the rock leaves I will plantthis thing called goat's beard, fanning outits gauzy roots, composting, watering, tending it.She will be goat's beard for now, and laterblack-eyed Susan on the hill.True gardeners work by the phases of the moon.Foxes return on time. I possess her now as never.I summon her. She rises on command.The dead can learn to obey. The Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time The priest at St. Mary's is miked,so the Body of Christ sounds crisp as a snack.I'm sorry for him, his Holy Communionbroadcast like a song. At the Sign of Peace, my mother says sheloves me—now, at last. She says so urgently,as if she's just remembered an unpaid bill. I wish I were small enough to fit inside her—in her hand—or better yet, to ridelike Christ's white corpse in the shallowspoon of her tongue. [End Page 179] Marsha Rabe Marsha Rabe is the director of publications at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut. She has published a short story in the Atlantic Monthly and a personal essay on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Copyright © 2007 University of Nebraska Press