TRAGIC Poem: Maggie’s Western Sky, by Leigh Silverton

Maggie wrote often.
The section between Dearest and Love always
detailed the important events of her week:
She bought a digital watch.
She gave up smoking.
She observed from her telescope 10,000 lumens penetrating a cloud in the shape of man with whom she once danced.
She also bought a hat that she called a fedora.
She also gained weight.

Last November 23rd on or about 2:30, I went to visit Maggie.
She was still in bed.
Her rubber tree looked heavy and unsettled.
Her fern was turning yellow.
(I suspect she over-watered it but was never really sure.)
I suspect also that her telescope that was pointed towards the bedroom rather than the sky was faced to avoid certain constellations.
Certain facts of motivation and perception.

During the next month, these events occurred:
She read a book on self improvement.
She bought silk flowers, an unreal lavender.
She bought a hat that she called a hat.
She had her house fumigated for insects.

She observed from her telescope certain undiscovered comets and stars whose points intersected with lavender light –
Constellations shaped like men and women locked at the elbow.
The men and women she
used to see in movies and in restaurants when she used to go out.
I suspect she also started smoking.
She also ate infrequently.
She also wrote down all her dreams.

At family dinners I sat next to Maggie.
And no matter whether she called Mom Mother or dad Father.
Or seemed uncomfortable addressing me entirely,
She always dressed in floral prints, an unreal lavender.
She always wore a hat that she called a fedora.
She always observed the couples passing,
Comparing them to constellations she’d seen through her telescope.
This has to do with a fact of motivation and perception —
A hungry man might see in them a ripe bowl of fruit.

During the final week of Maggie’s life I received three letters.
They detailed the color, weight, and texture of each of the plants in Maggie’s house.
The leaves of each were now brown and had tiny arteries that broke off independently
and barely crackled as they fell.
She rarely remembered her dreams but woke with the sheets scattered about her.
There was a colony of ants breeding in her kitchen.
After the first extermination they became resistant and bred in swarms.
After trying ineffectively to drown them she wrote that they were amphibious.
(I suspect that they were not but was never really sure.)
After Tuesday came Wednesday and so on.
The clouds reminded her of a couple but she couldn’t remember whom.

Clouds have a way of doing that to some folks.
After a while they all blend together and float through your sky like the
arid procession of days which is your life.
And I suspect it was that way with Maggie.
Nevertheless, her death itself was unequivocal.
Nevertheless, when I think of this sky,
Or this particular stretch of clouds —
How person might see in them an entire globe.
Or a woman riding bareback,
or a desert winding before her like the arid procession of days that is her life.

And another person sees just a comet ripping around the sky,
reminding her of someone –
A sister maybe.

C Leigh Silverton June 18, 2001