V E R S E and I M A G E

Another thunk against the window glass,

another broken wing or neck, as like as not,

another muted spill of feathers on the grass –

I love this space, but it’s been dearly bought.

Of course, the same might well be said

of the lamb we grilled last night, honoring

its sacrifice with salad and good bread.

The whole-grain loaf, the baby kale, everything

sundered from daylight for my sake,

floods the mind in unforgiving surge,

sweeps me into the sobering give / take

that underpins life / death. In the sun’s wake,

birdsong dapples the gold air with its dirge.

Or rather, hymn of wonder; my mistake.

from Daybreak, Unicorn Press, Greensboro, NC; © 2024

❦ ❦ ❦

Passenger side floorboard there’s a Mason jar of flowers, black-eyed susan and zinnia, marigold and mint. I cut them from our garden this morning for Mom’s bedside table. On I-77 South just past Jonesville there’s a field of sunflowers blooming, another field near the coverleaf with 421, all looking southeast right now because it is still morning. I’m driving to Winston to visit Mom and Dad in Kate B. Reynold’s Hospice Home. Life surely does suck. Life surely is exalted.

This is a respite care admission, scheduled so we can upgrade their bathroom and bedroom. Make their home more liveable while dying. Their dates of death are not clearly visible to us over the horizon, certainly not etched in stone, but how distant can they be? Is this what people mean when they say live one day at a time? Mom can still laugh when we joke around, although each day a bit more of her releases into airy nothingness. Dad’s crash has been more sudden, broken neck, delirium, bedfast, but he still seems to add a few more good minutes to each ensuing day. All three of their children will be under the same roof today, now that’s red-letter. We’ll be helping them with lunch, sitting with Mom in the flower garden for a half hour, logrolling Dad in bed to rub ointment on his back. And while the two nap, we three will have a long conversation in another room about next week, and the weeks after.

Yesterday afternoon my son called after he returned from a few hours visit with his grandparents. Josh took Granddaddy grits and collards and says he spent most of their visit eating. Yeah! Josh has been afraid to see the changes in the two up close and had put been putting this day off for months. I told him I know he still hurts from Jonathan, his best friend all through school, right after graduation the cancer. But then at the end of talking, Josh says to me, “So how are you doing, Dad?”

Don’t get that question a lot and even less often do I say anything more than, “Fine.” I hear the sincerity when Josh asks. All the drive down today and all the drive back what I’m really thinking about is how to continue the conversation. I’ll stop at his house before I get home to drop off a cooler he left at Granddaddy’s house. I’ll begin by taking him outside and telling him how much I appreciate what he said. I’ll ask how he’s doing. And then I’ll ask another – rehearsed in my head for days, weeks, months: “And how are you doing on your path to quit drinking?” Life can surely do its best to convince you it sucks. But I have a feeling the two of us standing in the driveway for a half hour talking is going to show life it doesn’t have to.

❦ ❦ ❦

Now that you mention it: death,

the cherry outside the kitchen

in full bloom, the novel I left

open on my bed, the stitch in

my side riding a rib, the small

hole at the center of my retina

where nothing registers at all,

the rip in the screen letting in a

gnat adrift on the whiff of daphne

blooming along the broken driveway,

the sudden abandon of your laugh, me

forgetting what I was going to say,

closing my eyes, holding my breath,

and now that you mention it, death.

from Daybreak, Unicorn Press, Greensboro, NC; © 2024

❦ ❦ ❦

The poet notices a little something, a little nothing, really: breakfast, a chess board, chalk dust; light across a woman’s profile, flowers that shouldn’t be there, a word that carries on its back two meanings. Common things, every day things. The poet notices and his smile as he points out what he has noticed is almost sly; the pointing is all about what he’s not quite saying. Then all at once you notice, too. And you smile.

In Mark Smith-Soto’s world you might discover wonder in commonplace, joy in commonalities, mystery in what we share and have always shared without noticing that we do. You might join him in memories that make you cry, realizations that lift from within you a deep sigh, possibilities that sober you right down before they exalt you. In Mark’s ultimate collection, Daybreak, every single one of the 56 sonnets has touched me, gently but insistently, until I admit I’m relieved: I am / a human being. I’m pretty sure of that. [Biology Lesson]. After reading these poems, I begin to notice the flowers in the cracks of my walkway with new eyes; they implore me that death [is] a lifetime of hours away [Aria da Capo].

During the years of this twenty-first century, my orbit and Mark’s intersected only a handful of times, for only a handful of hours. But what gravity and what luminosity! In life I knew Mark only a little; I am glad to know him much more in poetry.

❦

Mark Smith-Soto (1948-2023) was born in Washington, DC, and lived in Costa Rica until the age of 10, when his bilingual family returned to Washington, his father’s native city. Mark’s awards include a fellowship in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NC Writers Network’s Persephone Competition for his chapbook Green Mango Collage, among many others. Daybreak is his seventh poetry collection and is available from Unicorn Press in Greensboro, NC.

Thank you, Michael Gaspeny, for sending me Mark’s book as a gift. A treasure.

❦ ❦ ❦

I do feel somehow exiled here, outside

the frame – just what is it about a woman

at an open window, seen from the side,

an opalescent half light on her hands

holding the curtains apart, head tilted,

questioning? Maybe her gaze has stranded

on the naked lady half-hidden by the shed,

a blossom she knows she never planted,

her wondering, These small, random gifts,

why do they touch one so? But of course,

I can’t begin to guess her mind, it’s

me trespassing here, I should go before

she sees me, leave her to her thoughts –

“Oh, there you are, amor. Come look at this.”

from Daybreak, Unicorn Press, Greensboro, NC; © 2024

❦ ❦ ❦