The first poem talks about a trip to Spain she made in the early 70s, doing research for her dissertation on Spanish romanesque churches. At the time, Spain was still under the thumb of General Francisco Franco, a fascist and a promoter of "Traditional Family Values"...
1972 – Segovia, Spain OUT
OF PLACE
Noon, sun-filled plaza
bounded
by hotels, restaurants, small cars
atop
Segovia’s hill.
Pink cathedral, Gothic, at the far end;
aqueduct
(unseen) down the hill—
Roman,
of course.
Children shriek at play; girls
jump
low
to the ground over elastic ropes
in
patterns unknown to me.
Alone. Sola. Sola:
I await…
the
opening of a museum? a library?
exposed
by the sun of Segovia.
(Mostly
I wait to go home….
to
Vermont, to my children.
Did
I dream them?)
Looking up from my journal, I see
people
looking at me, looking at me.
I
am sola.
Men go alone; women go in pairs, in groups.
Every
woman escorted—
all
but me.
Skirts hang below their knees;
My
skirts end above.
(My
jeans are also wrong, it seems.)
Question:
what am I doing here, sola?
Researching
un tesis doctoral?
(Even
I don’t buy that story.)
So,
I must walk…
Along Segovia’s winding alleys
seven
Romanesque churches await me.
Stone
walls, arches, weathered sculptures…
Sola, I find
solace in old stones
in
whose crevices flowers flourish—
out
of place…
like
me.
The second poem talks of my father's descent into Alzheimers. Too young... It was hard on all of us, but especially my mother, who took care of him for 17 years, ten of them with him at home.
I Remember His Forgetting
“Numbers don’t have the same meaning for me,”
he
said. “I mean, like they used to.”
He, who scored 99 percentile on the GRE—he said
that.
I
didn’t believe him;
but
he couldn’t balance the checkbook.
Camping in Colorado among the trees and birds became
a
nightmare—or at least a bad dream.
He
didn’t seem himself somehow.
Although
the sun was shining…
At the first campsite, I followed his directions
as
we erected the tent with its aluminum poles
and
blue plastic covering, and pegs pounded
into
the ground, to anchor it.
At the second campsite, he couldn’t put up the tent.
I
had to figure it out on my own, visualizing
the
various steps. It sort of worked,
but
I was scared.
I supervised the packing up as we left; he followed
my
directions… sort
of…
He
was puzzled; I was frightened.
I
was cross.
Our dog Tom left us.
He
ran up the hill and
sat
down on our campsite.
He
didn’t want to go home.
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