Annuniciation

Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it
I know it is—and that if once it hailed me
it ever does—
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t—I was blinded like that—and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.





Marie Howe
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Hurry

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   

and the gas station and the green market and   

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   

as she runs along two or three steps behind me   

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?   

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,   

Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—   

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.   

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking   

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,   

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

Marie Howe

Photo:  Peter Bowers



What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably

    fell down there.

And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes

   have piled up.

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called.  This is the everyday we

   spoke of.

It's winter again:  the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight

   pours through.

the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in here, and

   I can't turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street,

   the bag breaking,

I've been thinking:  This is what the living do.  And yesterday, hurrying

   along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my

   wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush:  This is it.

Parking.  Slamming the car door shut in the cold.  What you called

   that yearning.

What you finally gave up.  We want the spring to come and the winter to

   pass.  We want

whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss - we want more and more and

   then more of it. 

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the

   window glass,

say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing

   so deep.

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm

   speechless:

I am living, I remember you. 

Marie Howe

The Last Time

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant

with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his hands and said,

I'm going to die soon.  I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.

And he said, What surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do.  And he said, What?

And I said, Know that you're going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

Marie Howe 

The Gate



I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made.  He was

a little taller than me:  a young man

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This - holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I'd say, What?

and he'd say, This, sort of looking around. 

Marie Howe