DIANE DE PISA |
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Diane De Pisa was born Diane MacQuarrie on Prince Edward Island, Canada (and has just finished a novel set there). She finished high school in Santa Barbara, California, and married Elio De Pisa of Rome. She earned a B.A. in Italian and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, writing her dissertation on Black Elk Speaks under the direction of N. Scott Momaday. She has taught at Loyola, at Berkeley and elsewhere; she is currently teaching English at a community college. She has published articles on the Sioux world view and an excerpt from a science fiction novel; her poetry has appeared in The Eclectic Muse and The Neovictorian/Cochlea.
SINCE YOU DIED
One at a Time Reading Between Your Lines Sum of Parts An Illusion Exposed Winnowing Out of Touch Just Checking Coming to Terms Seasons of the Sea Aspiration A Separate Sound Inseparable Ones The Ever Present O Cangaseiro
Last Tango Bedfellow Locus Amoenus Extreme Unction Pursuit
Why I Am Drawn to Silence Tempering Keep the Pain Alive Life is But a Dream Gratitude Merger
SINCE YOU DIED
One at a Time
What compels me to write
so often to you since you died?
Perhaps like Sartre I try
to save myself
from undertows that drown:
memories of your smile,
your last gaze grazing mine.
I follow your example
of being one-pointed,
tackle a feeling at a time,
skewer each emerging emotion
with a couple of lines—
like the Inuit with a spear
intent on one hole in the ice
where the seal comes up
to breathe.
*
Reading Between Your Lines
You asked, "Where will you bury me?"
and my heart broke.
I said I might strew your ashes
in some wild spot
where we used to walk.
You said, "Keep me with you a while."
My heart broke all over again.
I knew then that behind your brave front
you throbbed with need
to be loved, nurtured, and included.
You accepted the inevitable,
yet still longed to come home
to stay.
*
Sum of Parts
I miss you as I loved you,
not just for humor and kindness
nor in spite of anger and inconsistencies,
but for some unnamable essence
that made where you were home.
We were companions for life,
perhaps before and beyond it,
our names linked as proclamation
of a permanent partnership.
Two amounted to more than twice one,
your subtraction compounded
to more than that
of my other half.
Love and loss
defy reason and math,
assuming the air
of absolutes.
*
An Illusion Exposed
I have had to realize
how existence is unpredictable,
a powerful magician
under whose spell
loved ones disappear
and do not show up again.
Then we miss even
those traits that annoyed us.
I think, if only you could come back
for an hour, a day,
how ecstatic I would be.
Yet while you were here
we took each other for granted,
quarreled, relished time to ourselves.
We ignored the inscrutable mystery
that holds us in its grip.
Day to day life seemed safe.
Even banal.
*
Winnowing
Shall I cherish the nurturing kernel
and reject the chaff that chafes—
remember you generous and kind,
forget the meaner moments?
Must I dump your coarse hulls
and flail you to saintliness?
I lived with you entire.
I will remember you so:
whole grain.
*
Out of Touch
The scars that marred
the surface of our world
diminish in perspective:
old bickering a dumb-show
glimpsed through cloud curtains;
years of being near, far, near again
a minuet seen through the wrong end
of an astronaut’s telescope.
I’m falling in love with you once more
and yearn to be close.
But I am an exile
and can never set foot again
on that planet where we
held hands and sparred.
*
Just Checking
>From time to time, while I cook or read,
I pause and mutter words I dread:
"He’s never coming home; he’s dead."
Of course I do not need a reminder.
I’m testing my strength against this sentence
as one might try muscles after being bedridden
or take on a trail that had been too steep.
Will there come a time when I’ll breathe free?
Will these words ever not
knock the wind out of me?
*
Coming to Terms
(with a nod to Dostoevsky and Nisargadatta Maharaj)
How futile to think:
what if doctors had caught on
to the invasion by a major infection
in time to stem its onslaught?
You might have lived
for who knows how long
with chemotherapy and radiation.
I am tempted to say that fate
caused all the doctors to drop the ball:
fate—shorthand for the fact
that we are all responsible for all,
no result with one cause only,
everything always involved.
Complication foils predictions.
I know this is so
but instinct impels me
to envision a hinge where
destiny’s door swings
the other way, and you
are still here.
*
Seasons of the Sea
On the ocean of grief
swells of sorrow
strike broadside,
memories swamp,
sobs dance like dinghies
on choppy seas.
I sink beyond my depth.
However, in a moment of calm
I sense that I am immersed
in the element
that buoys all.
*
Aspiration
Good morning, loneliness!
May I grow to adore you,
the longing left by my loved one’s loss—
a space vast and void,
a vacuum at my core.
May I enter emptiness
silent, open, as into a sanctum
and attain to that profound
calm wherein all losses are re-found.
*
A Separate Sound
This old house runs the gamut of its frets:
labored creaks of the furnace grate
as metal heats, cools, and clicks;
the nautical clock you bought,
ticking loudly away minutes to doomsday.
Rafters and floors with woody
expostulation and reply
crack boldly as seafaring boards.
At night I hear light padding—
not of the cat.
I try to tune my ear
to hear just where it’s at—
in case it’s your footfall
coming near.
*
Inseparable Ones
They come at dawn
before I get my thinking cap on,
children stealing into mother’s bed:
Brother Fear and Sister Sorrow.
They crowd my space,
press against my solar plexus.
I wake with the pulse of dread
as if intruders prowled the house.
Then I recognize these twins of mine
and go back to sleep again.
*
The Ever Present
"It seems only yesterday" rings true
as I thumb through old snaps
of Dad rapt by the dolphin show,
near and real as Mom,
who survived him by a score.
You, more vivid yet, appear
shifting shape from year to year.
You gaze in my face at our wedding
and waves of romance overwhelm me still,
so many years a flimsy fence
washed out by waters of remembrance.
You fish in Stuart Creek and countless summers
return with resinous breezes and glittering pines.
Your laughing likeness floats back
the punch line of a wisecrack.
Twenty years from now
in the trackless time
of my deep mind
you’ll be alive as ever.
*
O Cangaseiro
Guarani harps twinkle a tune
sharp as stars in a Paraguay sky,
and flutes come sliding in,
tropical streams soft and smooth.
The rhythm is perky, almost cheeky,
and your cheeks smile with your eyes
as you do a tricky little
quick-step dance to this
favorite disk.
You heard it first in Italy
with your teen-time girl,
accompaniment to early love.
Now I am left
with this second-hand memory
and the image of you
as you prance in place,
stamping out that happy tempo
to fluid flutes and stellar harps
every time I hear
O Cangaseiro.
*
Last Tango
I was at a high-country retreat
when you came in a dream,
young and clean-shaven.
You put a slow tango on the phonograph
and we danced body to body.
I don’t think we spoke.
I smiled and savored your nearness,
brushing your cheek with my lips
as we sailed zestfully about.
I marveled at how alive you were
and could see that your chances
of beating cancer were good.
Then I woke up and recalled
that you had aged and died—
but my dismay was allayed
by the thought that perhaps
you’d come on purpose as a youth
to give me a moment’s happiness
and leave a good taste in my mouth.
*
Bedfellow
In this dream you seemed real,
lying in bed by my side.
I could see the folds around your eye
as you recited an archaic poem
about someone "freaking" somewhere.
We cracked up over that one.
You were hearty and fleshy
so I knew I’d been deluded
to think you were dead.
Delighted to find you still alive,
I pulled you into my arms
and hugged and kissed you to death.
You evaporated in my embrace,
a bubble breaking.
I woke to an empty bed, disbelief,
and the disappointment
of almost having had
my dearest wish fulfilled.
*
Locus Amoenus
I sit with my little circle of familiars:
two cats courting on the terrace,
two crows nesting in a nearby tree.
I do not sit in their midst
but off in the north-west angle.
To the south I see
the green of bonsai and ivy,
in the east the pink and white
of cosmos where they sway,
and north at my elbow
there’s rosemary for remembrance.
The breeze brings me news
of fragrant flowers
and children’s mewls.
It would be a little world entire
if you were here.
*
Extreme Unction
Your death,
shaking me from the roots,
has dislodged
all smallness, hardness, and bitterness.
I break,
like olives beneath the wheel,
as you did at the end,
and shed tears
like precious oil
pressed from the heart.
*
Pursuit
The wind routes its rounds,
frisks every leaf and hillock,
looking for something.
Maybe it has heard
you’re a missing person.
My mind rides with it,
restlessly calling, "Where are you?"
Perhaps you have stopped
in a pocket of calm
where we have no warrant
to follow. Yet I hope
you will come forth
and turn yourself in.
*
Why I am Drawn to Silence
Strange
since I associate you with sound—
your voice a resonant baritone,
chores performed to Vivaldi full-blast—
that now I seek you
in silence.
Since you dropped your body
I delve into depths
of dreams and wakeful stillness.
No doubt you are there, dissolved,
a virtual or latent you
apparent only to the discerning,
not fleshed out or formed
but probable as the potential cloud
in a broad body of water.
*
Tempering
A weathering of the soul occurs
as tranquil meditation takes turns
with monsoons of sorrow.
The sizzling downpours drown
in cold, dispassionate depths of mind
and disappear.
At times the hot tears flow
even while serenity prevails,
tropic rains coating a cool windowpane.
These shifts from agitated heat to dousing cold
temper endurance fold on fold.
*
Keep the Pain Alive
To honor the anniversary of your death
I made a painting and a party.
Five Phoenixes on my mandala
fly screaming forth from a flaming pivot
to all points in the universe.
Their red beaks pierce the void.
The party also was designed
to dispatch your essence
to parts unknown
and resign mine
to letting you go.
On that day that marked a year,
I expected to miss less
your face, your voice.
Instead I relive your loss,
shiver with unvoiced screams—
alert to Signs and lucid dreams.
Your death aroused a lively pain
and my life is more vivid
for it.
*
Life is But a Dream
Even in youth you saw
this world and all of us
as parts of one being.
We learned later,
some give this entity
the aspect of a god,
perhaps Mother Divine,
or simply an invisible
all-informing Intelligence
that dreams us into existence.
We are, it is said, that
and nothing but that.
What happens, I wonder,
when that Great Mind
awakens, as it has in your case,
from the dream of our singular self?
For you now the answer
is either obvious or irrelevant.
For me—still dreamt but bereft
of the figment that was you—
to know is of the essence.
*
Gratitude
I have been kicked out of complacency,
booted from banality.
I rebound from inertia
with the stinging spring of pain.
Gone is the reticence,
the fear of faux-pas.
I am bold, I step forth.
The walls that kept me cloistered
are crumbling with my tears.
Resentments rankling for years
resolve to pardon.
Death-begotten fears
hold less dread
since you have gone ahead.
Because it pries me
from passivity
I pay homage to your death.
*
Merger
In reverie
you spoke from the heart of me
where the great sage
said you’d be,
smiling familiarly,
assuring me
that you’re there
at my core,
not gone forever.
You brighten
when I welcome you
with praise and fond memories
and blend into my being.
Then we dance to one melody.
My life gives life to you
and you enliven me.