Rose Petals and Snowflakes

At the edge of the woods, I call my monkey.

Stand and call, without much hope. It’s not a pretty

woods, not a forest you’d see in a painting

full of repeating tree trunks and slants of light.

It’s a tangled mess, impenetrable.

And it’s winter. Snow lies over the ground

and on the branches of every twig and vine.

It’s been months since Mr. Grim went missing

and I think, “what could a monkey find to eat

out there in winter? There’s nothing.”

But I stand and call, not even loudly, since it seems

so hopeless. Just a plaintive cry, more like a child

calling for her mother, more like I was the one lost

and not the monkey. But then, there he is,

scampering through the woods, leaping up into my arms.

He’s disheveled, hair mussed and full of twigs and snowflakes.

He’s grown. He’s the size of a child, the size I was

at the time I first remember my mother pulling petals

from a faded rose, tossing them high into the air

and letting them fall around me, cascading, twisting

back and forth like pink geese landing on a clear blue pond.

Not tepid pink—fuchsia, hot saturated pink. And remember

how much bluer the skies were then? So deeply, serenely blue.

A blue that could swallow us, and often did.

Not the faded skies the politicians give us now, full of ozone

and acid rain. I walk back toward home carrying Grim

on my hip, his small arms around my neck, his hands

clutching me. We stop to pull tiny rose petals

from tiny white roses and toss up four handfuls. They flutter

down among snowflakes against a sky lost in a blizzard white.

When I wake up and don’t have Grim, I’m confused.

I think I have to hurry home where Mr. Grim is still lost

and rescue him from the woods. It’s a while before I’m awake

enough to realize he’s gone. Grim’s dead; my mother’s dead.

And there are no white roses blooming in this winter’s snow.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

For Margaret and Grim

1^st: Saturday, February 03, 2007

070203e

p365-07P