Two Poems

IN THE TEMPLE BASEMENT

Standing in the ladies’ room line, in the temple basement, the woman in front of me said, “I’ve been sitting behind you, admiring your hair.” “Thank you! White for Rosh Hashanah!” I say, anda gift from my mother.” I love to say   to someone I imagine as a normal person—though who knows. And I love to see cut flowers age—we are cut flowers, when they sever the cord, we beginour dying. She lived to be eighty-five, I needed every hour of it.Each time I made her laugh on the phone, that warm gurgle—and she couldn’t reach out with her long curved polished nails, to stroke me— we were making something together, like a girl-made mountain stream amongSierra onion, and lupine, stonecrop and leopard lily. And especially I needed every minute that last evening, watching her, watching over her—and beyond her harm!—and wishing her any good thing, including more life, though she began to look serene, her lungs filling, rattling, ceasing, starting, but her spirit was on its way, and since she had always believed it, and I think could not have borne to live without it, it was as if she was nearing the blue home of her heavenly father, and then finally opening into permanent blossom.