Corsage

CORSAGE - to the Order of Runeberg

The freezer holds only a few things.

Fewer as it makes its ermine muff of frost,

as it becomes time, and overtime, to defrost.

The shelves hold a few things. At the back

on the lowest slab with the margarine,

my withered corsage, red carnation:

I dressed in black, and went on the bus

to a motor hotel downtown, where were gathered

members of the Order of Runeberg. We may never

reveal their secrets; but we learned none

as we settled the kitchen of the Valhalla Temple,

spread tables with paper from a heavy roll,

laid the cups together, a field of rocks on the counter,

layered the sandwiches on thick platters.

Or if someone forgot, we were asked to button up

and run down the block for Half & Half.

As we walked past the locked dance hall

we peered through the cracks into the big dark there,

then down the stairs to the street, past the tavern,

the closed shops, empty window of a bakery,

to the Food King, holding the money

in a pocket in a warm shut fist.

Later an older woman you could trust

released the fragrance from the can of coffee,

it rose to the high ceiling, she

spilled some into cheesecloth, twisted the ends

and lowered the white into the speckled boiling pot.

Not long after that, the meeting would end.

At the motor hotel, on a rolling board

were pictures of the Order of Runeberg. I found

myself there, a small blonde, her face

turning inward, her hand on her mouth.

And the house I lived in,

my grandma on the porch long before I was born -

her guitar, her white blouse. The occasion

was the forming of the chapter of the Order of Runeberg.

That night I talked. To my sister, to my mother.

Fingered the fringe of her flowered shawl.

My carnation, a twenty-five-year carnation

was red. That night I did not dance.

The corsage stares now at the white

or the black, when I open the door or shut it.

And when I defrost into daylight it comes.

What comes to it then is a matter of chance.

But I wish I had a nickel

for every time I've climbed these stairs.

My mother with her satchel, the financial

secretary climbing the stairs to the Valhalla Temple.