Hilleary Foster Botts, 1944-63

We heard what little
we understood—less
than perhaps she could
for being deaf; words
that are obvious to us
were not so to her,
and clearly what love
left us after the fact
lies a-bleeding now
nor broken into words.

The last time I saw her
she was pale as the slip
she had on; but I guess
a thousand of us who
house about the rubble
of the lime pit quarry
could not have noticed one.
May we slip as easily off
and the lips be sealed,
as she has suffered less
than is customary.

It didn’t dawn.
It can’t 
crack its eyes.
Its music
claws the air
with nine knives.
It never shows but in the eyes.
Perhaps in her swollen feet.
And I told her
to soak it.

Her reluctance
told the truth—
how the heart
troubled her.
Well, we all
suffer from that.

“Be good above all
to Mother and Father
and do as they bid you…”
gathering up my shirts
and going down the back.
She simply couldn’t manage
the words we knew by heart,
by habit, and repeat what I say.
Look, no one’s teasing you.
Try to say it all at once.
And all she said was,
“Don’t tell Mother.”

Her deafness talks back to the snow.
It is fed up. We have fattened it.
It will snow. And it will continue to snow.
And we will have trampled it to pitch.
And pitched a tent of habit to her grave.
Lies clash with the snow’s ashes.
Her eyes fast; her ear fed up.

She doesn’t look herself…something
else, less permanent has taken her place.
Some fluid, some balm, some local spirit,
the friends of the undertaker.
We shuffle after, bearing her body
toward dark and depart.

At the house, strangers file in
the open door, through cracks
in my voice, in my clothes, my walk.
I’m not there to deceive them.
I’m walking back. Smoke curls after me.
Smoke from the limestone kiln. I’ll walk
till tomorrows cold in the morning.

The lines of helpful faces
with their hams and scalloped potatoes
breathing down on the coffin
of this tiny girl.

Small solace will come to us
this winter. Those hit hardest suffer
the least. May the snow show the grass
stubble that fed her heart
as long as it held.

                                                  The customary drum
beaten as numbly as possible…
Hang her wrists about my shoulders.
I gather her up and count the steps.
Her calf-cold lips glue
to my neck. Keep going.