On this anniversary of Ivy’s death, I remember
the long days of picking colonies from agar,
drawing blood from HIV patients while gowned
and masked, hardly able to find a vein. I imagined
Ivy sleeping on my bed or chewing underneath,
eager for my return. Often, I wanted to call her
to tell her I’d be home soon. Thirty-six years,
and I still miss her more than the dogs who lived
with me in the years after. When friends stayed
in the condo with her when I flew to New York,
I called to check in. They put the phone to her ear
so she could hear my voice and I could hear hers.
Thirty-six years without magic to bring her back,
no phone or clone to resurrect that life. 

On this thirty-first anniversary of my mother’s death,
anniversary of sorrows, I’d like to tell her what
she’s missed. In Japan, people call their dead from
a garden phone booth on a black rotary dial, whisper
the numbers aloud as they place a call to a home
washed away in the tsunami. On a Wind Telephone
where the veil between worlds is thin, the dead
can hear your news of graduations, your purchase
of a home surrounded by oak trees, daffodils, iris,
perfect haven for a pandemic quarantine.
I used to call my mother in New York and then
tune her out, let her criticism roll over me without
comment, allowed her voice to soothe. Today she’d
say, Are you eating well? You need a haircut.
                                                         April 27, 2020                        

I wanted a large dining table, oval of dark wood—
wormy maple with a distressed pine finish--
with a glass top. This one has traveled
from its North Carolina factory to my
New York house, to a Florida apartment,
condo, then house where the dining room
looked out on the pool and fuchsia bougainvillea
blooming against the cedar privacy fence,
and is now in Virginia with a view of shrinking
sky as the canopy of red and white oaks try
to meet at their crowns. This table has heard
the last tense conversations of a marriage,
has held up fabric and patterns, witness to poem
drafts and secret sharing between friends.
Perfect for a buffet of baked eggplant parmigiana,
meat balls, stuffed pasta shells, artichokes
sautéed with mushrooms and two salads,
while it listened to the friendly chatter
of the Folk Club. And then, guitars and banjos.
It remembers the questions of my sister’s
boys before they grew too distant and knew
everything, remembers the assembly line
of folding, stickering, stamping, for The Florida
Book Group’s newsletters for bulk mailings.
I leave this table open, large, one placemat
for my plentiful, solitary meals, the opposite
place with a stack of poetry books, Post-It flags,
a pen, and a leather book of handmade papers
with a metal clasp for gratitude, joy, my lucky lists.