Beverly Hennessy Summa

Winter Rituals

in memory of my grandparents

He poured her a cream sherry

while she put more wood on the fire.

 

She worked at a backstitch

while he played the organ —

 

it was something he started up again

when he quit his pipe

after the first cancer.

 

She sipped, listened,

stroking one of the cats

that had come in from the cold.

 

He closed the organ,

switched off the lamp,

then stopped to stir the fire,

 

their slippered feet shuffling

past the picture window,

 

shadows playing

like an old movie reel

in the amber light.

 

She had his pills waiting

on the bedside table,

 

and they were tucked into

flannel sheets by 8:30

on those winter nights.

 

Now, every fire a reminder

of my grandfather’s warnings—

 

like the way the cold

can seep into a house,

if you aren’t careful.

 

 

 

Pantoum on Finding

The Archaeology Professor’s

Obituary Two Years After His Death

 

It was 26 years ago when I sat in his class.

He once said you can build

            a whole world from fragments.

I was a tenebrous undergrad penning poetry.

He was younger than I am now.

 

I believe you can build

            a whole world from fragments.

The obituary said he dug until the end.

He was younger than I am now.

The memory of motion, dig and sift—

            a dogged push through one last excavation.

 

The obituary said he dug until the end,

even after neuropathy stole all feeling from his hands.

The memory of motion, dig and sift. 

I read he died at home on a Sunday at age 71.

 

Neuropathy stole all feeling from his hands.

After the diagnosis he woke up each day

            and said the words fight, fight, fight.

I read he died at home on a Sunday at age 71.

Sometimes I cry for what is distant and unseen.

 

After the diagnosis he woke up each day

            and said the words fight, fight, fight.

He devoted his life to unearthing the past.

Sometimes I cry for what is distant and unseen.

It was 26 years ago when I sat in his class.

 

BIO: Beverly Hennessy Summa’s poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, Chiron Review, the New York Quarterly, Book of Matches, Nerve Cowboy, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Hobo Camp Review, Buddhist Poetry Review and elsewhere.  Beverly grew up in New York and New Hampshire and currently lives in South Salem, New York with her family.