Steven Schroeder | on the first anniversary of my mother’s death
It is possible, possible, possible. It must / Be possible... -Wallace Stevens, “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”
1
It does not seem possible that a year
has passed, but the calendar insists this is
the distance between Advent and Advent. To think
otherwise might make one forget their lines
and send the whole play off the rails.
I remember you saying once (I’d asked
how you were doing) that time creeps along
so slow you feel like it’s standing still but every day
goes by in the blink of an eye, gone
before you know it.
And I believe that is as good an answer
as any. If the question is about doing, it is
about time, never mind
how. Sometimes, you said, I
think we live in two times at once.
In the gap between this and that,
where we live, there is no time,
like the present.
Time was we could go on like this for hours
in your kitchen, one just cooking, one just sitting,
but now it seems it is gone
in the blink of an eye
like a day passing.
2
Listening to “Sing Sing Sing,” I have been
studying the wildflowers (as you and
your mother did), how
they grow. And I believe it is about time.
While I am cooking, this all comes back to me,
and I am grateful the dead are so often more present
than the living – present in what is, present in what is past,
present in what is yet to be, no time between advent and advent
where we are carried by a conversation like the songs you
always said are always in your head.
I can hear them now.
The calendar insists, but, still,
it is possible. It must be possible.
Chicago
22 December 2021
