Sleep-Anxiety
Moon violets rush spring. Then bloom the bulbs,
the cherry cutlets
My son stands in the woods and I crouch
just until I cannot see him: blond hair, yellow raincoat,
six bottom teeth
Every gingko leaf drops the same time
to my feet
My mother lost her son in these trees. He didn’t use
the house key in his pocket because he was not alive
She washed her black hair and disappeared to dry
hyacinth and some hostas in the yard
I had to be careful of what she saw, especially at night
I took her a white blanket the size of the yard,
told her her Will was in heaven
even though he was the blanket she would wrap herself in. He was the house
in the ground, and I was her grief I could not see. My son was mine
| Julia Anna Morrison |
|
levelheaded: Sleep-Anxiety
The plants in this poem swirl about in the early lines of the poem. They are rushing, and blooming, bursting onto the scene in violet and cherry. Later the gingko leaves drop to the speaker’s feet. The hyacinths and hostas dry up in the yard. Plants, in their various stages of life and decay, are a metaphor for the people in the poem. There is no clear cycle or progress. There is life and loss, and the two exist simultaneously.
When the speaker tells us her mother “washed her black hair and disappeared to dry / hyacinth and some hostas in the yard,” she underlines a daily, ritualistic attention (or maybe inattention) to the way things live and die “in these trees.” It’s no accident that we see the washing of her hair just after learning her son “was not alive.” The speaker pairs the mundane and the tragic – the “house key” with the loss of a son, “six bottom teeth” with the disappearance of another.
The final sentence, “My son was mine” makes plain the speaker is interested in separating her son from her mother’s memory. She also draws a distinction more subtly, pointing out that her son has “blond hair” while the speaker’s mother has “black hair.” But we’re also never sure the two boys aren’t the same, or at least same enough to draw them together into a common cause of distress. Where the speaker’s mother “lost her son,” the speaker “cannot see” her son in the woods. And after the repeated “he was” in the final couplet, we’re given a final, past tense “My son was,” as if he too only lives in memory.
Maybe the most interesting difference, though, is that the speaker’s “crouch” puts her son out of her field of vision. The poem makes clear that her son “stands in the woods.” He is not actively moving away. But when the speaker crouches, he and his “yellow raincoat” disappear. She actively removes them from her line of sight. Her crouch is a mystery, and it’s kind of a trigger for the story about her mother’s loss. The name “Will” and the concept of “will” come to mind. But this is a complicated poem, and there’s no piecing together exactly what has or will become of these sons and mothers. Perhaps, just as the speaker “could not see” her mother’s grief, we are blind to the scorched core of other people’s life and loss. Perhaps these are things we only experience alone.
-The Editors
