Unday'd

I throw days out of the calendar.

I disown them,

Dis-number and dis-month them,

I will not have them change year and come around again.

March Four, March Seven,

April Twenty Seven

June Twenty One, June Twenty Three,

December Eleven.

Now Alastair has gone and

gathered his great verbs, his skylarks and Scotlands
his silver-vowelled Spain.

folded his dawns

to ride over the mist-imprisoned hill - away, beyond away.

That done,

I too dismantle
September Twenty One.

 

*

And if you really want to know

I’ll tell you ‘how’ the days you think I’ve lost 

return to me:

Minute by minute, that is how;

and memory by memory.

An entire childhood to pick from, long summer days with cousins and berries and song; my lovely Maia who smelled of lavender and quince; who told me that thing about God and I believed her even when I didn’t believe Him. Who needs the measly muscle of March Four and March Seven, beside all this and more? 

That Afrikaans rhyme Ingrid sang in the kitchen, Ingrid in her ball-gown ready for a May ball, Ingrid in her good-girl shoes standing in a queue in London to vote for Mr. Mandela. With these moments – and I have so many - I can build endless April 27s.

June 23? I don't see it. I see only Paulo perched on the roof with a pouch full of tools and red plums. Paulo taking a breaking, squinting the sun, eating a plum, plum juice on his chin and I know he is thinking Gaia, when I throw this stone in the grass below, make a tree grow.

December 11.

Does. Not. Exist.

No room for it.What is a day? 

when Dad fills the Everywhere and the Always

and hides the hourglass away.

And now, September 21, away with you too! Shoo!

Leave me with Alastair: aglow

in the Dominican sun, showing me – in Spanish and in rhyme -

How to make bread,

ride bikes, read books, chop limes,
write poetry.