March 2016
Donna Hilbert
donnahilbert@gmail.com
donnahilbert@gmail.com
Shortly before he was killed, my husband and I moved to a rattle-trap beach house on the peninsula in Long Beach. Going to sleep to the sound of the surf and waking to dolphins and pelicans sustained me through the almost unbearable grief. Making the place habitable gave me a task; writing gave me purpose. I am still here, loving the place, taking nothing for granted. www.donnahilbert.com
Seattle
“ . . . but Wilson had no car. He felt almost intolerably lonely.”
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
So homesick, I engaged wrong numbers
in conversation
for the sound of another
human voice
that year in Seattle when it rained three hundred days.
Not hard as it would at home
and then be done for months,
but just a light piss,
air always damp
like the baby’s diaper.
I watched pink fingers of mold
double every day
in the corner of the window
looking out on evergreens and endless grass.
I longed for LA—
palm trees and Hybrid Bermuda,
trees that let in light and grass with grace
enough to die back
yellow in the winter.
I hated the rain the natives praised
“rain makes everything green,” they’d say,
deranged as they were on chlorophyll and caffeine.
I was green too at nineteen,
with a shiny new husband, one baby,
belly ripening with the next.
My husband studied engineering at the U.
And I studied too—his books from World Lit—
Dostoevski, Kafka, Camus.
My favorite was Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter—
burnt-out-cases
adrift in the existential sea.
And I thought then that I
was more displaced
than any whiskey priest or disaffected spy
which I declared to any wrong number
who would take the time
to listen.
-from Transforming Matter. PEARL Editions, 2000
3rd Avenue North, Seattle
Look, Dear Heart, it’s me
in winter cap and coat,
dressed, for once, for weather,
posed in front of the old apartment
where we were always cold
and often hungry. Meager haunt
of sauce-less spaghetti,
of peanut-butter and day-old bread.
You were a student here, studying
into the night while I read novels
and felt abandoned and unloved.
Sundays, I bawled on the phone
to Mother and you called your dad
to talk sports, laugh about my cooking.
Here is where I lay on the sofa
aflame with fever, where a punk
intruder punched your front teeth loose.
Here is where we fought everyday,
made love every night.
Here is where we brought
our first two babies home.
Here is where we mapped
our sparkling future.
Here is where we couldn’t wait to flee.
Now, the babies are grown
and you, Dear Heart, are gone.
But, you would recognize this place,
it’s just as we left it—
the faded paint, the splintered door
opening to the asphalt lot.
-from Nerve Cowboy, Summer 2015
“ . . . but Wilson had no car. He felt almost intolerably lonely.”
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
So homesick, I engaged wrong numbers
in conversation
for the sound of another
human voice
that year in Seattle when it rained three hundred days.
Not hard as it would at home
and then be done for months,
but just a light piss,
air always damp
like the baby’s diaper.
I watched pink fingers of mold
double every day
in the corner of the window
looking out on evergreens and endless grass.
I longed for LA—
palm trees and Hybrid Bermuda,
trees that let in light and grass with grace
enough to die back
yellow in the winter.
I hated the rain the natives praised
“rain makes everything green,” they’d say,
deranged as they were on chlorophyll and caffeine.
I was green too at nineteen,
with a shiny new husband, one baby,
belly ripening with the next.
My husband studied engineering at the U.
And I studied too—his books from World Lit—
Dostoevski, Kafka, Camus.
My favorite was Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter—
burnt-out-cases
adrift in the existential sea.
And I thought then that I
was more displaced
than any whiskey priest or disaffected spy
which I declared to any wrong number
who would take the time
to listen.
-from Transforming Matter. PEARL Editions, 2000
3rd Avenue North, Seattle
Look, Dear Heart, it’s me
in winter cap and coat,
dressed, for once, for weather,
posed in front of the old apartment
where we were always cold
and often hungry. Meager haunt
of sauce-less spaghetti,
of peanut-butter and day-old bread.
You were a student here, studying
into the night while I read novels
and felt abandoned and unloved.
Sundays, I bawled on the phone
to Mother and you called your dad
to talk sports, laugh about my cooking.
Here is where I lay on the sofa
aflame with fever, where a punk
intruder punched your front teeth loose.
Here is where we fought everyday,
made love every night.
Here is where we brought
our first two babies home.
Here is where we mapped
our sparkling future.
Here is where we couldn’t wait to flee.
Now, the babies are grown
and you, Dear Heart, are gone.
But, you would recognize this place,
it’s just as we left it—
the faded paint, the splintered door
opening to the asphalt lot.
-from Nerve Cowboy, Summer 2015
©2016 Donna Hilbert