Learning Subtraction Poem by Pamela Uschuk

I

Michigan was flat as my chest,
the Lookingglass River so lucid that even at seven
I could read its slow tannic thoughts.
At seven, I knew I'd fallen into the upside-down heart
of a world always saying goodbye.

II

After last night's dust storm that slashed nuthatches
from trees and flung all the solar lamps around the gravel yard,
the sky is unapologetic, sees all
regret wriggling like meal worms under its scoured lens.
Must everything today lean over its reflection like a heron
mesmerized by the pond of its own loss?
Mountains rip wind through grief, sing
the way a saw sings as it chews through spruce.

III

At ten I watched a tornado
harrow a trench straight down the road to our farmhouse,
while my father stood in the kitchen door. He sent me
to huddle with spiders, my brother & sisters, and Mom,
the only one screaming down the stone ribs of the basement until it was clear.
I could have run, then, into the shriek of wind
and pulled out its tongue, strangled the syllables of fear
spitting shrapnel into my mother who would dervish into a mental ward
before the next week, but my father blocked the door.
More guts than brains, he said of me.

IV

Grandma said wildflowers can't be transplanted.
She wanted to die in her own house.
All I wanted was for her to laugh
beyond my own life line. It took me twenty years
to visit her grave, and when I rubbed my hand
over the mound, a sweat bee stung my palm.

V

Where do they come from—
those gales that whip branches out of our hands
like the faces of those we love
who won't stay in place? How do we
begin to untangle the snarled hair of goodbye?