Claire Drucker
Back to the Wild
In ferns and flowering oxalis beneath grandmother redwoods, I find the self unafraid of society breaking into unmanageable shards. Nettles and wild iris, purple as a bruise, sway in the breeze, singing in ancient tongues. Gracie says I could live in the woods, happy and unencumbered, as we walk over bay and oak roots and miles of mycelium, a parachute threaded with our shared genetic bones. Sitting on redwood duff, sunlight reflects a perfect circular web, and I am unwilling to walk back, wanting to halt time, like the red-shouldered hawk soaring above us to become a new kind of stillness a new kind of alive. The Dying Time for my mother In the hospital bed, an operatic tune shoots from your mouth, a trilling vibration, as if the ululating cries carry you closer to the ethereal edge, weight of your body disappearing into refrain, into a tighter shell. You could have been an opera singer except a housewife, children, and career were not woven into the 50’s so the music slipped away, those last years almost nothing melodic except commercials and old movie tracks on TV. Above your head, a G, an A, a high B undulate the air. You are running the scales, betting on the sweet spot, humming to be released. We encircle you, sing you a bridge, a language for your crossing lay yourself down on the rocks now three generations of women, chanting, cradling you with our voices let your body down in the river sacred minutes, as if water empties you of song, of sorrow buried deep in the cells listen to the drumming on the other side an invisible raft, lip of the horizon you are destined for lose yourself in the meantime the leaving place, where the call of blackbirds with their red-tipped wings can take your breath away. |
Claire Drucker has published her poems in numerous journals, including the Women Artists Datebook, Epiphany, Puerto del Sol, and many others. Her last chapbook, The Fluid Body, was published by Finishing Line Press. She teaches English at a local community college and lives in Sebastopol, California, where she loves to swim, dance, and play marimbas.