Rocking MoonA Poem by TheStubbornPen For everyone who has to grow old. Grandma is rocking in her chair, like a goddess on the crescent moon sprinkling down Autumn for a harvest. And he comes; with October in one hand and a pocket watch in the other. "I'm early," he says and sets his hat on the coffee table. The Universe is hiding inside his fedora but Grandma is careful not to look. "The kettle is on the stove," she tells him from her rocking moon, "if you'd like a quick cup." The gray-white wisps of her hair wrap up the stars of the window behind her into beds of cumulonimbus. He folds up Grandma in his eyes, a shade just darker than Forever, and holds her there like she hasn't been held in years: With a warm, patient love that understands the inconvenience of age, and gives up the egoism of beauty to get the names of every laugh and tear or shout that carved those "ugly" wrinkles into her face. When he moves across the carpet, kicking up the dust of mountains and the sand of deserts, he goes slowly because, really, he's older than she is. Long fingered artists at the end of his arms, pick up the teapot. They are calloused and burned, with black and silver comet flakes trapped under the fingernails, because he works nine hours a day reshaping creation so that it still fits into it's cradle. He pours two cups and flavors them with the breeze of his breath. Grandma sips the tea from underneath the reflection of his handsome face and asks "Is there time?" He answers, "If there isn't, I'll make a little extra." A skein of black wool in Grandma's lap, pierced with silver needles, weighs her down with the graceful lump of an unfinished sock. Isn't that like life? she thinks. Unfinished Socks. They drink together and listen to the silence of a king sized mattress that is always cold on one side and a patient telephone that rings once a week on Fridays at two-thirty. Outside the mailbox stands sentinel at the end of the driveway. Empty mouth wide open, like a scream, or a challenge; an argument, that the postman gave up on long ago. And the rose bushes, which don't bloom anymore, stand at the mailbox's back. "I'm done." Grandma's voice is crackled leaves and knuckles, Fall wind. She puts her feet flat against the rug and stops the moon from rocking. He stands up and puts his hat back on so the Universe trickles around his ears like a busted egg. Grandma smiles toothlessly at him when he embraces her out of the world. He makes her all the promises she's heard before and puts her to sleep in the brim of his fedora. He leaves her bag of bones and the empty tea cups behind. At two thirty the phone yells itself hoarse and feels rejected when the dead don't answer. The bed turns over, cold. The roses gave up the summer no one came to trim. The mailbox keeps shouting though, having no way of knowing what has happened inside. Grandma's children come. They don't have the presence of mind to wonder whom she was having tea with. And the cups catch the salty water of their hysteria; which only proves that they didn't understand her. He'll come back for that later, use it to refill the sea. © 2010 TheStubbornPen
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