Searching for Geronimo
Published in The Long Arc of Grief (Finishing Line Press 2019)
I.
Geronimo disappeared while we sat
in a circle of mismatched chairs under the elm,
shucking the last of the summer corn
from your garden.
You peered up into the tree’s leafy arms,
where he’d scrambled on sight of the visiting dog,
but there was no sign of the scrawny stray
you smuggled back from Mexico.
How long had it been?
I counted and peeled back the husks—
outer brown and brittle,
inner still green and pliant, pulled away
the silk from the surprise of neat white rows like baby’s teeth,
even baby’s breath, and said
I am “a-maized” you grow your own corn (ha ha)
and got you to smile.
By dusk, he had not returned.
You searched creek bank, barn, rambling house,
went into all the dark corners
holding out a spoon of cat food like a divining rod.
And I searched too,
hot attic, damp cellar,
for Geronimo,
for everything lost here.
Still fresh
to one rarely here,
wanting so to soothe what’s past soothing,
to deny such hard healing can occur.
II.
Years earlier on another visit,
we sat at your kitchen table,
chipped coffee mugs—
me coffee, you gin,
my toddlers humming in the next room,
and you asked
from behind your dark-rimmed glasses
and the baritone that allowed you such questions,
why I had children.
I worried over my answer just a moment
before knowing I had to tell you the truth.
Even though I knew the pool where you found him
lay just out of sight, a few feet beyond the garden.
Even though I wanted to ask you
how you still slid into the water each morning,
or more to the point,
how you turned your head to breathe.
For the sheer pleasure of it, I said.
Just one breath,
and then you nodded,
approved the answer,
said no other could possibly make any sense.
III.
I remember this moment as I drift to sleep,
Geronimo still missing,
you in the next room,
the wide pine boards sighing
as you pace and call his name,
asking the ancient walls to give up this one secret.
My heart at once broken and healed,
healed and broken, by the capacity of yours.