What's Left Behind

What’s Left Behind

One mid-September afternoon

I peddle past a chipmunk, leveled

and now, a garden glove, its 
fingers

splayed intact. The chipmunk’s form,

his nut-brown stripes of perfect fur 
are

one dimension of who he was.

Home by dark, I lay my bike

by plants and grasses, things that bloom

by plan and cluster in my flower bed.

A raccoon’s planted by the berry bush!

I stop my eyes to take him in.

He lies in swoon face down and never

moves at my approach, not to

bother a soul. I slide my shovel

beneath his weight, surprised he is

so light and lay him in the barrow,

his fine long fingers draped along

the edge. We barrel along the winding

drive and the moon lays bare his fight—

the scat, the tufts of bloodied fur.

We cross Fray’s Road, his nails shine sharp

beneath the moon, and he and I

agree to slide him 
deep within

the anonymous trees.

Back home the ground is writhing

in that soft and pungent place

maggots already thriving

on what he's left behind.

—Barbara Trachtenberg

Exhibit, September, 2010: Impressions of Boston

Weather Patterns

For JoAnn

The mailman couldn’t come today—

my walkway’s still encased in ice.

I walked around the mounds of snow

and traveled to the old PO.

I reached across the countertop

and grasped the rubber-banded pile

and figured I would trash it all

until I saw the card from you

dated just a year from now.

The cancers come to lie like thieves.

Beneath the snow they leave their paths.

I pulled my spade out of the snow

and dug it deep to the length of the blade

a spade’s an inverted heart-shaped thing.

For forty years I’ve saved your words

our children children when we met.

Your letters came like sweets to read—

mine sent like secrets to be found.

The mourning dove just pecks the ground

digging at shrouds of ice on ice.

A comfort’s mounding all around.

Please coat the earth, protect its skin.

Beware, lay bare a slice a time.

Just let us write our lives and bind

them for our children’s eyes.

It snows again the snow on snow

the white on white the storm on storm

beneath the blankets of our lives.

Now lay a pillow on our earth

and snuff the breath of hows and whys

we used to figure out our lives

so soon we’ll shovel layers to level

the petrified remains.

—Barbara Trachtenberg

Poetry

Newton City Hall