Time in a green flowerpot

  by A. Palmer

Flying is unnamed

a realm like underwater

that we can only talk about in its lower strata

its shallow degrees

dawn is at the edge of the flower’s chalice

the horizon on which the moon rises

sitting

full on the lip

and enormous

     How many dead stars do you see, he asked. 

     There’s a place where mothers can sign up and have a star named after their dead babies—they mostly do it for ones that they never knew—the stillborn. 

     I mean, how many do you think we see right now that aren’t actually there anymore—the ones that have extinguished themselves, eaten up their energy, but because their light is still traveling those incredible space distances—we can only liken them to sea distances, but space is deeper—but we will see those stars until the beam they shone, that strand of light, narrowing finally to a pinpoint, will shimmer and then wink and won’t open again. 

     She said, As luck would have it, it could be the number of cigarettes we’ve shared tonight, or it could be the number of stillborn babies—or as many hands as there are in China. 

      We were walking, the leaves falling in behind us—a wake that memorized the words we left before closing over them, drowning them on the cement.  When the snow melts, they will still be floundering there, dried by the sun until they peel at the edges and float up, feathers picked up by two other people, or one alone, or the orange cat that sits on the porch in the sun.  The cat is Maxime, a French name.

     Sometimes I am only a death-mask, like I saw in the French cemeteries, a visage captured and replaced in the hours after death and so always I am the absolute of what I will be.  I will start young with my children, casting their faces in plaster and wrapping them

Lachaise and the tombs that seemed to have been pushed up from the ground, volcanic granite that had forced up, crowded, and was carved and given stained-glass windows, broken now like the gates that stand ajar, locks and chains hanging, like the broken bell of a skirt; it was my skirt I saw hanging, torn like the chains.  I am trees following the paths and the shrubs, leaves brushing one another and keeping time in my solid belly, ringing and ringing like the bell of a skirt.  

     I want you to see the flowerpot, green, with vines and painted pansies twining around its fat bowl.  I want you to see it huddled there, in the sun, remembering the dark kiln in the sunlight, remembering the damp earth once pressed into it—it is half-full of clear water, now.  Sometimes I look into it on my way to the car, sitting half under the eaves of the garage, sitting alone in a stack of terra cotta pots and plates, and I see in the still water a reflection of the clouds that passed over it during the night, or the cat that came around the corner to drink out of it, or the leaves falling in the yard, flapping on their way down.  Sometimes it can see the hem of my skirt flash past as I’m walking out to look at the night sky.

     We didn’t talk anymore that night. 

*

     Last night, I had a dream that I reached up to my bedside lamp to turn it on and it electrocuted me—I was amazed and with my arms spread wide, I seemed to float down the hall, my feet barely tripping, just brushing the floor.  The only noise was the inverted sound still ringing through my body and my ears, making a light that emanated from between my hands—a cat fled before me, bounding down the stairs and I heard my mother’s name falling down the stairs after me; I’m lying at the bottom with my hands over my eyes.  We are walking now, the last brittle leaves falling behind us, rolling and rolling until caught by another leaf, locked and turning in the first dusty snow. 

     He said, I’ve been thinking about moments prior to time as such, when nights were longer, or if one were in prison; inability to participate in time.  Some people keep time with a cigarette—

     Six minutes.

     —Or how long it takes to drink a beer or a cup of coffee.  He sings here, from Desire, “One more cup of coffee for the road, one more cup of coffee ‘fore I go—to the valley below.”

     But the trees keep time better—they don’t liken the rings to anything because they don’t need to—nor does the rain think, as it falls, catches, and is suspended on the tip of a blade of grass, “How my brothers fall, less than a second apart!”  These things just happen, like the tides, unconcerned with how long we reckon it as. 

      The cat’s name is not Brenda—it’s funny, because I don’t know my mother by that name.  She will always be mama to me, of course, and she named me.  I am afraid of becoming my mother—he told me this, once: I have a story for you to read.  It was all about fire, consuming, absolution, catharsis.  The protagonist is rising up through the chimney, ashes, at the end and is finally part of the tableaux, the dark spruce and the sparks.  It doesn’t matter; my mother and I are the same and so are he and I.   

     I looked into the flowerpot today and saw the greenness of the bottom, the clear water settling to rest and it played for me a fantasy.  It filled itself up with coins, shining and smooth, caught in light that was deeper than the water of the flowerpot, and the coins turned to leaves that swarmed up out of the bowl like flower petals, like cherry blossoms ringing and thin willow leaves (the willow trees outside my mother’s house, smelling of dry late summer) and swirled around me, caught me, and then fell.  

*

     I saw the cat again today, and thought of a painting.  He was picking his way through the snow, lifting his feet clear.  I don’t really know his name, but I will call him Bosch today, because we are on Hieronymus Bosch’s “Ship of Fools” today, all laughing, sneering and oblivious.  We are rocking toward shore, rollicking, and there is our yellow pennant and above it, whose skeletal face is in the leaves of the tree?  The cat was mincing up the steps as I watched, and the door opened and a woman with a bag of frozen fruit in her hand shooed him in.  I think she was making crepes, strawberry blintzes for herself.  I can imagine her humming, thinking about the romance of the food she is making, lifting the edge of the crepe from the pan with a fork, gingerly, peeling it back and flipping it.  I can see her assembling them, spooning the cheese in, rolling them up and pouring strawberries over the whole mess.  I’m sure she shared it with the cat, whose name might be Marmalade, or Tiger.  

    Today was the snow that will stay, and the flowerpot was even more green with snow on its lip and the water inside was less, and

crusted with ice—I could still see the snow that fell all night playing back around the edges of the ice, where the water was still free and breathing.

     We walk, because we usually do, and if it weren’t so cloudy, the rings of Saturn could be seen with binoculars, and so he brought his along.  It’s funny how, once you are close to someone, you speak so many of the thoughts you have that are just passing before your mind’s eye, flitting, thoughts like finches, but you mention it because you know how he thinks and he thinks he knows, too.    

     I remember the time that we sat on the roof, she said, and it seemed like the stars had fallen.  But even in motion, the fireflies hanging close to the ground, pulsing, they hadn’t touched the ground.  I think stars would evaporate before they would commit themselves to silence.

     Evaporate?  They’re still gone—but I guess dispersed. 

     She said, Yes, they’re still participating. 

     Maybe the falling stars are caught by birds, he said.

     They laughed at the memory, at the history, at the absurdity and the order.

     And time ceased, cesium ticks slowed and fell out, and was heard only in the fattening of tree trunks, imperceptible, and heartbeats.