“The Last Diary Entries of Septimus Warren Smith” by Katherine Orr
Like an attic full of books.
Like a gymnasium. Like sorrow.
Everything is always so big.
But I’m not afraid of the silence
that follows what I came to say.
So instead of talking, I watch
my wife work on her bonnets –
feathers and flowers, violets,
vegetables, birds. All the ladies
come to her, now that it’s Spring.
*
Explosion in the park again
this morning, bits of bodies
close to her buttoned boots,
a terrible, synaptic white
against the lawns, the intricate
lattices and canals of our ears –
We dissolved, deaf, into
park benches and boxwood,
at least I did, and tonight I see
the worry in her face as she
braids last autumn’s bittersweet
into a pearl-edged veil.
She’s not known what to do,
who to turn to and, as I once did,
has trusted those they told her
to trust, she’s emptied her purse
and signed her name and
spelled out mine –
she’s told them where we live –
What else could she do?
*
Last night, she showed me –
she’d gathered all my little poems
and pictures, placed them in a
swatch of satin and tied them
in a packet with a long silk ribbon
which I untied and together we
looked at them one by one.
And then we sat there
without saying anything.
*
I swore to protect her
and I am an honorable man
but the doctor is on the stairs –
Once I’m gone, she will – what?
Stand here, slight, among the
tea cups and colors? Three ripe
peaches in the cut-glass bowl,
lace curtains, barely moving.
____________________
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