Poetry Archives

Judith Ford
Poetry from Volume 4 Issue 2

The Sharp Sunlight

At first I thought I’d made you up or dreamed you.
“He’s a lawyer, going gray,” I told Judy over coffee,
“An unlikely hero, absentminded and good-humored,
in a blue suit and tie.” It was a cold January; I didn’t expect this.
At first I thought I’d made you up or dreamed you.

No one looks at me the way you did; by then, I knew
my whole story: ‘brave working mother raises child alone’
and those eyes were nowhere in it; the fine lines
at their corners, fossils of smiles spent on babies, friends, and judges.
No one looks at me the way you did; by then, I knew

all about closing down things you can’t afford
to need, and by then I didn’t. You moved my wooden chair
for me when you realized the light was in my eyes.
All around us, doors blew open; I whispered to them, “Stop.”
All about closing down things you can’t afford

like being ten years old and afraid of the light
on the walls of my dark bedroom; I’d run to my parents’
bed where it couldn’t find me; thirty years later you carried
me to yours; laughing, you kissed my closed eyes
like being ten years old and afraid of the light

because everything I’ve ever loved has changed; I count on
cycles of birth and death and making room for the new.
Your scent on my pillow like ether, the habit of fear
reasserts itself without any hope of stopping me,
because everything I’ve ever loved has changed; I count on

these last threads of faith or hope; I wonder
at my recklessness. I tell Judy it’s all because she
talked me into hiking in the Cascades; it’s because I
climbed that mountain blind with snowfields and filled with
these last threads of faith or hope. I wonder

if I’d do it again, for the sharp sunlight, the high meadows,
brindled with snow patches and wild roses. If my eyes
had hands to pull the mountains close, I’d have carried them home.
At the top, they give you chocolate. I didn’t mind the cold rain.
I’d do it again, for the sharp sunlight, the high meadows.

At first, I thought I’d made you up or dreamed you.
No one looks at me the way you did. By then, I knew
all about closing down things you can’t afford
like being ten years old and afraid of the light
because everything I’ve ever loved has changed; I count on
these last threads of faith or hope. I wonder if
I’d do it again for the sharp sunlight, the high meadows.

The Scent of Lightning

When I try to write about summer smells,
I find I don’t know their names,
except for pine, which is obvious, or roses,
fresh-cut grass, creosote
on the damp highway, the smell of warm dust
speckled with the first drops of rain,
I find myself talking instead about my mother
who says that even lightning has a smell.
“Crouch down,” she says, “if you smell it.
That means it’s going to strike
right there.”
Bad luck for her now,
to have such an exquisitely tuned
instrument and be caged in the
nursing home. There even creosote
would be better than incontinent bladders,
incomplete baths, the sweet rotting smell of cancer.
A nurse pulls a heavy blanket of Lysol
over it all and even that
fails to cover.

My mother looks down
at the contracted hand,
lying in her lap.
“My hand smells sour,”
she whines softly.
“It bothers me.”

Certain flowers, my mother says, bother her.
Carnations, mums, some of the lilies.
Funeral flowers, she calls them. She prefers
lilacs, peonies or lumberyards littered
with fresh-cut timber and hills of sawdust,
her old unwashed dog,
the steaming earth in the backyard
of her house in Whitefish Bay
after a thunderstorm. “We were all
so happy there,”
she sighs, forgetting the next day’s
scent of cigarette stubs soaked
in bourbon and vermouth.

When I was a child my mother
always knew where I’d been
and what I had for lunch.
“Intuition,” she said it was. Now I
know it was airborne molecules
of onions, bologna,
Alice’s mother’s Chanel #5
entwined in my hair and clothes;
Even my feelings had a smell.
“Are you sad?” she’d ask, hitting it
right on the head. I learned to cover
up, the way a hunter rubs animal droppings
into his skin for camouflage;
I carried rage, embarrassment, guilt, to the shower.
“Using Prell shampoo again, dear?” she’d say,
when I came out.

If my mother were here with me now,
sitting on a wooden porch step in Waushara County,
she’d name these smells for me.
“Willow,” she would tell me, as she watched
those clouds build in the Western sky.
“Someone’s hay field, the Christmas tree farm
across the highway, a dead squirrel
under the porch, this morning’s coffee cups
unwashed in the sink.
And, soon,
the lighting.”

Judith Marks Ford, Shorewood, Wisconsin, has written many short stories and poems and a literary memoir about her experience with a chronic life-threatening illness. She’s a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders. Her collection of poetry, Burning Oak, co-authored by Martin Jack Rosenblum, was published in 1986 by Lionhead Press. She writes, "The Scent of Lightning was written on a sunny afternoon when I was sitting outside on the steps of my mother-in-law’s farmhouse in central Wisconsin. My mother had had a stroke less than a year before. I was full of sadness for her. So, although I had meant to write a poem about summer smells, my words turned out to be all about my mother’s incredible sense of smell.”

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