a grey snow colorless
10:29 am. It's as if
color sank back into
itself. Only ghost
breath and the dryer.
Snow on ledges,
on sills. I need a myth
color of something
growing. Give me the
story of the first emeralds,
of something wildly
bright hidden in
the bed of the sea. I want
to drift with the ones
who live under
the surface of water
and ice. I want an ice
palace in India. I want what
only magic will do. Get
me to one of those
emerald vases no on has
seen. Color of what's alive
and growing this day
of green stone
and bare trees. I want
something precious and
rare, brighter than
clear diamonds. I
wouldn't need an emerald
vase to force the first
wild plum in tho it
would be startling. But just
like in the myth, let
it shatter into a hundred
pieces, clear green
I can press against my eyes
she brought to every
room still lingered in
my mother's eyes.
"Frieda, get your own
phone," room mates
wrote in her yearbook
"so we can get a
chance." That sliver of
light in the long dusty
apartment, color of
the cat's eye ring
neither of us coveted
but with its own wildness,
traces of who my
mother had been when
she danced barefoot
on her toes, dying for
lessons while her
father insisted until he
was dying, dance
was from the devil, a
sin. Wrong. And the man
she married never even
tried. Still, I remember
she kicked her legs to
gypsy music as if for a
moment she wasn't
hideously earthbound to
nothing she wanted
and for that moment the
gold flashed and you
couldn't tell the
dancer from the dance
my mother never cared about
either of these, never felt
beauty or love for herself
but showered her daughter
with it, wrapped her in so
much love one could barely
breathe without the other.
Think Persephone and
Demeter. Without her
daughter, my mother's
world was snow. In her
last months, green was the
only color she wanted
to wear. A green sweater
set folded with its tags
still on in a closet remind
me of how much she never
got to do. "your mother
had so much coldness
inside her," the Hospice
people said. She could never
get warm. How did she
know so early she was
a disappointment being the
first and, sadly, a girl. 3
boys followed but that
didn't help. At 65 she found
out that her birth had not
been registered for days. So
we decided to celebrate
her real and her always
celebrated birthday too. That
wasn't enough. All her life
she wanted an emerald,
her birthstone for May.
Maybe because it was rare
and beautiful and cherished,
everything she felt she
never was. Maybe she wanted
an emerald to stun and astonish,
but a good emerald not just a
mediocre stone, to make her
birth finally seem remarkable
Recent books from Lyn Lifshin include The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian (Texas Review Press), Another Woman Who Looks Like Me from Black Sparrow at Godine, following Cold Comfort, Before It's Light, Desire and 92 Rapple. She has over 120 books & edited 4 anthologies. Also out recently: Nutley Pond, Persephone, Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness, Lost in the Fog, Light at the End, Jesus Poems and Ballet Madonnas, Katrina, Lost Horses, Chiffon, and Ballroom. And just out: All the Poets Who Have Touched Me: Living and Dead. All True: Especially the Lies. Her web site is LynLifshin.com