Augury, Für Elise, Attic Drummer, One Full Bath, The Sneeze
Poems by Claire Keyes
Augury
In the flow of traffic, I follow the drama of red-winged blackbirds
harassing a crow, that sacker of nests. How splendid
the torment as they dart in low above the marshes
to peck his rump. I slow down, shift to the right lane,
and follow the scuffling birds as if they were an augury
Homer would describe in assiduous detail: how they foretell
his hero’s destiny, the clash between peoples, Troy
reduced to a smoldering ruin.
Blackbirds flash scarlet epaulets; the crow
banks and turns, flummoxed. A truck looms up,
blocking my view. It’s the summer of the rig exploding
in the Gulf of Mexico and my mind is filled with images
of pelicans and turtles coated with sludge, of flames
shooting into the sky, of the ocean coursed by rivers of oil
and beaches blackened by wave after wave
of this man-made mess.
And still I drive.
We live dangerously. Drive dangerously.
I want to stop the car, get out and follow the blackbirds,
find out what they know. Certainly something
about the sanctity of nests, about never shying away
from the predator’s attack, never forcing
the encounter, but using wit and will
to protect what is precious.
– First published in Caesura
Für Elise
Sing, my mother urged her daughters. Play the piano.
Be happy. Sitting on the couch, apron smoothed,
she waits for me to play Für Elise. Aunt Jo joins her.
I can’t stay long, she whispers.
I like twirling on the stool. All year, I’ve taken lessons
from Sister Cecilia at the convent and my mother has heard me
practice. I feel loved and worth the two dollars she finds
in the sugar bowl where she keeps her stash.
Though I’m not ready, and may never be ready,
I will myself to play well, to make her happy.
She’s warned her girls not to frown as she does, pointing
to the line creasing her forehead. If only I can forget
how shy I am, the notes will roll smoothly
as if Beethoven himself were my teacher.
My mom listens, and my aunt, both smiling as they rise,
bow and waltz around the living room, my mother’s feet
suddenly light in their white shoes with the poke in the toe.
If it ends like this, I’m dreaming.
– First published in Mom Egg Review
Attic Drummer
Where else could he practice
and not drive us all mad? Then the sad quiet
when he disappeared. In the attic,
he could let it rip playing the drums, the drums.
When he no longer played, we all felt his absence.
I was just a child. He played in the school’s marching band.
I knew, without saying, that when he practiced at home,
something freed up in him, something hidden released.
His story came to me in pieces. A girl snatched
from the street? the call to the police?
Whatever freed up in him, hidden urges released.
My playful brother found guilty of a crime
and sent to jail. Later, much later, I learned
he and his pals grabbed the daughter of the chief
of police. My mom visited him in jail.
Back home, she cried in disbelief.
My father, grim and sad, took the blame as his.
Around the house, shame and the painful void
of a son and brother deeply missed.
We counted the months until his release.
And that girl? Nightmares. Questions about trust. Fears
about boys, about cars. About boys in cars.
– First published in One Art
One Full Bath
In a family where ten of us shared one full bath,
I learned that cleanliness is not next to godliness.
That the sight of my brother in his boxers
emerging from his bedroom was memorable
as was his distress at seeing me dash into the bathroom.
That nobody enjoys cleaning the bathtub.
That sisters with long hair can be a real bitch.
That the water heater held finite hot water
and that a tepid bath just doesn’t do it.
And that you can ignore your mother’s wrath:
what are you doing in there? —only so long.
That one full bath was a big deal for my mother.
That she grew up in a house with no bath: a childhood
better left unspoken. Better yet, she had so much class
she never told us how good we had it.
So, of course, I think of the princess and the pea,
a dame with so much class she agonized even when
the mattresses rose higher and higher. How very sensitive:
a single pea felt through all those layers prompting her to utter
her last complaint. It ground against her spine, her hip bone.
She didn’t know she was being tested. Was this misery
all the prince could offer her? Then he knew who she was,
divined her quality. Some of us have class to spare.
Some spare us their sense of class.
– First published in One Art
The Sneeze
God bless you, I said, when my office mate
sneezed.
I don’t want your god blessing me,
he sneered, irate, or pretending to be.
OK, I thought, no more blessings for you,
but his contempt grated.
What did he mean about my god?
Why would someone hate being blessed
by my god or anyone’s god?
Maybe he was a Unitarian. But they believe in god,
don’t they? Perhaps he sensed a Papist—which I was
by upbringing if not by observance.
Gesundheit, my father used to say, when we were kids,
his German an odd benefit of military service.
It was fun to stomp heels, stand ramrod straight
and command: Gesundheit!
The next time my office mate sneezes, I resist my desire
to offer a blessing. He doesn’t want it, even if he needs it.
Gesundheit, I say instead, no god involved
only a general wish that he flourish
despite the splatter of viruses coursing towards my desk
and his pitiful need to control my utterances.
– First published in Verse Virtual