by Lisa Bickmore
in the garden the fountain burbles
near a Buddha, his hands in dhyana
mudra. You remember: you wanted
a dress not white but something
creamy, like magnolia petals:
you found a bolt of fabric with a sheen,
a flowing hand, a color called
candlelight. Our mothers’ friend
made the dress. I watched as she fit it
to you. She spoke busily of marriage
as she pinned. Years later, her marriage
ended—yours and mine, too. Now,
you tell me you’ve kept dresses
your mother had made in Hong Kong,
a little dress you made for your daughter,
but when you’ve looked for the one you wore
at your wedding, it seems to have
gone missing. I must have got rid of it,
you say, or left it behind, the vow of it
entirely unnecessary. We, the both of us,
were very young then. Now, we know that
one’s heart will be broken, broken again
and again. An image of your son,
the youngest, framed on a low table downstairs,
another in the room that was once his room.
His face in that photo alive to the light.
On the morning shuttle, I head south over
the Richmond bridge. Memory is stubborn:
a valley never forgets the glacier that moved
through it. Across the water, there’s a car
disappearing into the hills, visible only
by taillights: twin red eyes, flaring, then gone.
::
Lisa Bickmore is the author of three books of poems. The second, flicker (2016), won the 2014 Antivenom Prize (Elixir Press). She won the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize for the poem ‘Eidolon,’ which appears in her third collection, Ephemerist (Red Mountain Press). She is the founder/publisher of the independent nonprofit Lightscatter Press. In July 2022, she was named the Poet Laureate for the state of Utah, and in 2023 was awarded a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for poets laureate.
Image: Quino Al
ID: a white magnolia flower on a black background.
Psaltery & Lyre 