Being Left Alone in the Center of Things

See, honey, how your long bones lengthen,
how your flat hip sends the sap
down through the marrow to the square knob of knee –
that’s your daddy’s leg bone:
he planted the notes for that bone
deep inside me on the leather couch
while your brothers dreamt their own dreams
and the stars whistled a clear October tune
over the Berkeley hills.
 
See when he walks by on his way to mow the lawn
in his ragged shorts, how his heavy bone drops down
just so.
 
             And see how your mouth turns down at the corners
making you look stern when you’re only thinking
of which dress to wear tomorrow
or rotating a math equation in your mind.
That’s Grandma’s mouth, carried in the secret program of an egg
that waited in my left ovary for forty years
in case there was a chance to send you rolling down
the dark blood tunnel and push you,
huge and sleepy, out into my waiting arms.
 
Hold my hand so I don’t feel this terrible lightness,
so I remember how you are the link beyond me
in this long strong chain in which I stand,
past the center of my life,
childishly clutching the link behind.
 
Grandma talks to her invisible long-dead father
all day behind the thin walls, worried neighbors.
Her stern-looking mouth, telling me this, goes slack
with surprise and sorrow.  She is letting go of me
like a forgotten balloon from the hand of a distracted child.
She wanders uncertainly down a long road,
her eyes fixed on a distant point I cannot see
but feel as fear. 
 
                             I am left here bobbing and floating,
unattached to the earth, looking back for her,
looking forward for you, my long tall sally.
I am beginning to drift.  Take hold of the string,
my perfect rose, my reason, my serious girl child:
take my hand.