Handwriting
My mother popped up, or rather flowed in
from the ether. Her ashes dissolved years ago,
shaken from a small wooden box near a buoy called Penguin
anchored off waters where she grew up, tried
hard to be seen and loved by her parents.
Her handwriting distinctive, as if she were sitting next to me
by the fireplace. Her message, written out of context
on her recipe for butter crunch: “You’re such a clear thinker.”
How I have struggled with her love, so hard to feel,
and now, please come back so we can settle things.
Years after his ashes, scattered off the jetty my dad walked
as a boy, young man, then after the War—the tide slack or
ripping, ebbing or flowing, he reached me. It was just
a piece of shiny cardboard in my desk drawer. He’d printed something
funny in colored markers—his charisma as animated as popcorn.
And with my three friends, artists who left way too young,
their names penned in corners of paintings on my walls,
announcements for openings I saved in a cubby. Sometimes
all you can do is accept, find old letters written in cursive
like a fox’s trail crossing a field of snow, disappearing into the woods.
Louise Taylor earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. They have published four books co-authored with Barbara E. Cohen: Dogs and Their Women; Cats and Their Women; Horses and Their Women; and Women’s Best Friend: A Celebration of Dogs and Their Women. Louise is also the author of a collection of poems, Stones on All Four Corners, as well as a memoir, Nantucket Sleighride.