Like a Poet

Blossom Plumb

“It’s not a poem.” Sammy Engle surveys the lined tablet on the kitchen table.  “It’s a word wreck.”  His sentences are overturned, hurled off the track, sturdy nouns horribly twisted, the injured being treated at the scene.    “Poor things,” he mourns, “They’re only good for scrap now.” He crumples the page he had been writing.  Tosses it.  The tall wastebasket billows with white paper peonies.   She’ll never know his love, his Sarah, Empress of his dreams.  He had seen her, sitting in a slim curve of canoe, cutting through the clumps of narcissus crowding the silver river.  He had seen her.  She was already part of him and she didn’t know it.   “Where is the language hidden—love language?” He bends over the table, lays his head on his folded arms.  The smell of lemon soap on his shirt comforts him.      10 o'clock and the apartment is still hot.  One small window over the sink peers in from the night but the breeze ignores it and the room is still as a photograph.    He hears his mama's steps on the stairs—heavy, sweet.  They stop at the landing.  Why?  He opens the door and looks down.  She is leaning over the wheelchair of their neighbor, Emanuel Estaban, admiring his scarf.  It’s a flame of color, a don’t-weep-for-me scarlet, defiant as the skirt of a flamenco dancer.   Sammy hears it:  “Never mind the grey,” it says, “I am alive in the scarlet.  Speak to me there.”   His Mama does.  “Good Evening Mr. Estaban,” she says, her voice lifting, “Your new medicine, is it helping you?”  He lifts his old lion head, sees the heavy packages sagging in her arms, her weary eyes.  He sees his battle-shield on the ground, glinting in the sun’s evening.  “Yes,” he says, “it’s working fine.”   This is a lie, but he wants to have something to give her so he gives her his yes.    One word, Sammy thinks—three letters and it’s a damn novel; it had roots and sky.  Emanuel traveled to a far place to get it, triumphed over obstacles and won.  My  words to Sarah never leave home.   Bessie smiles at Emanuel.  She knows it’s a gift.  He returns her smile, polished, and squeezes the red shawl like the hand of a comrade.    Notes from an almost—tuned piano rise from the first floor and wander the scarred steps.   Sammy hastens down, takes the bags from his mother, bows, packages tilting, to Emanuel, carries them upstairs and plunks them on the kitchen table.    He pokes his nose in the bag.  A parade of aromas greet  him.  “Wowee,” he says “this’s not Gefultefish.”   Bessie works long hours, shops for food on her way home.  In the tangle of the market, she had picked up someone else's groceries.   The room welcomes the strangers, bouquets of cardamon and apricot bloom into the tired space.    They peel back the brown paper, rich olive oil paints the bottom of the bag.  Squinting, she reads the ingredient list on the back of the box, “Lebanese Specialties:  Baba Galouj, Tahbouleh, ooh—hard to say. Sammy you read it.” He studies the text  “Lubya bil Lakem.  Ah.”   “What shall we do?” he asks.  Mama looks at the door, the three flights—then the clock:  8PM.  She closes her eyes and rocks a little from the waist.  Spreading her hands above the bag, she stirs the air like a pudding.    “It came to us,” she says in an altered tone—an oracle's:  “It's meant to be.” They check each other for agreement, laugh, open the cartons.  They ladle fragrant nests of food onto their two best plates, deep blue, glazed like lapis lazuli.    The room feels like a garden.  The wheezy wicker chair and the sullen sofa upgrade their gloom.  The breeze reconsiders the window.  Sammy pulls back the yellow painted kitchen chair and holds it for his mother.    With attention, he serves her, mounding glossy purple eggplant, framing it with vegetables of sage and chartreuse.  He makes a painting on her plate.   Never, never have they tasted food like this and they become Lebanese.   “It's beautiful,” she says clasping her hands on her ivory brooch, “We should have a camera.”   “Right away, Madame.” He leaps to the cabinet and grabs an imagined camera. “My old favorite,” he says, “my Leica.”  Quickly adjusting lenses, he snaps a portrait of her plate.  He looks into her face, at the joy visiting there, her fierce black eyes—eyes that had seen a life for them out of a ruined place.    “But you, you are the real beauty,” he says and begins rapidly snapping his forefinger against his thumb, standing on a chair, crouching on the counter, clicking fast like paparazzi, clicking her weariness away.       Sarah lived in a big brick house with flowers that bloomed in white window boxes all year.  Was he afraid of her house?   She noticed him at least.  Her desk was close to his in chemistry class—Catalytic Processes.  He had discovered a third reagent and delivered an essay on it in for the junior class.  Sarah had started the enthusiastic applause after he spoke.   A booklet flutters from the folded napkins.  He reads:  “In Lebanon, bread is revered; it is never thrown away.  If it becomes truly impossible for consumption, it is kissed before being disposed of.”   “Wow...kissed.”      Arabian flowers open in their speech.  They feel grateful, like it’s the first bread, moist and springy, the crusty top kissed by the flame.  You are my bread of life, Sarah.  I will revere you.      How alive is the bread when his mind is present.  Dear mind, please share this meal with us.    Later, after coffee, Mama gets up and makes a few dance steps, slowly, in her heavy black shoes.  First a little pattern toward the dresser, then to the fridge, fluttering her apron to the left and then to the right, her chin tilted high.    “Mama,” he says, and jumps on the footstool “a fantastic idea struck me.”  He slaps the lucky spot on his head.  “Listen, maybe there's courage in this food.”  She stops dancing, still holding her skirts up slightly.    “What's that you said?”   “Courage—in the food.  Look!  What’s happened already!  In half an hour, it made me a photographer.  And you.  It made you a dancer."   She laughs.  “Yeah, Samuel, I’m a dancer.” She manages some version of a curtsey.    “A Polish bow.”  she says and rubs her knees, stiff from not dancing.   “Do you think? Maybe it'll help me talk to Sarah, speak to her soul...like a poet.”   “Samele, It’s inside you.  We have artists in the family.  In Prague.  Nathan.  He taught violin from his little house.  His students get famous.  Know what he told them?  “You must not die with the music still in you.”   “Must not die.”  Sammy repeats.  He hears Emanuel’s “yes.” His music.  Sammy opens to the thought.   “So tell me, what do you love about her?”  Sammy spins around in place, winding up.   “Everything.  I love the way she ties her shoes.”   “Her shoes?”   “Yes.”  He pulls over a hassock and demonstrates.    “She puts her feet on the stoop.  Just so.  Even.  They agree perfectly.  She pulls the laces toward her, tightens the white x's on the instep.  Then she ties them—over and under,” he sing-songs like a nursery tune, “and through, creates the bow, lets the loops rest easy on each side—safe.  She gives them a little pat.”   He throws his arms wide in the so sue me pose.  I know.  I know!  It's the most ordinary act, everybody does it every day, but in her hands—it's conjuring."   Mama nods.  She remembers that music.    “Everything moves to where it should be.  When I watch her tie her shoes, she puts the world back together.”   It's quiet.  The forks glisten.  Outside, a train slows.  Stops.   “That's my poem, mama, that’s it!”  says Sammy.   ”So, go tell her about the shoes and we'll have Baba Ganouj at the wedding.”

 

Photo Courtesy of Dreamstime.

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