RUNDELANIA

Poetry by Mary Khazak Grant        

                                

The Poem About Them

You’ll remember us

there won’t be a day that goes by without your wanting us to be there

how we fit in your back pocket like a multi-pocket tool, a Leatherman

but now we’re gone.

You’ll remember how we were lost on a mission and didn’t return ever.

That we were sent Army to Micronesia,

to Suriname, or Special Forces to Afghanistan.

We were perfect for the job, but you couldn’t afford us,

the American military, they can, and did.

You’ll remember how we talked, laughed and

loved you,

that we were always true, ready at your call

to serve you,

we didn’t walk but run,

never ran but flew,

truest birds you ever knew,

but we’re gone now.

You will reach for our ghosts,

will feel it slip through your fingers

all the days of your life which remain,

there will never be an assuagement of your

thirst for us,

no, nor a glimpse again

of the clear brilliance of our features,

nor a piece of sense related to the stars,

meteoric brilliances, angels or

holistic solved puzzles.

You will wander through meadows,

no, aimless through fields of weeds,

seeking for us,

but we will never return, ever.

Your love will have a name,

may link to our photos as kin,

but the habit of it will eventually

be lost again,

like the names of our identities,

our place mats at your table,

will forever remain barren and

bare in this lifetime.

Chapter Three has ended,

there was a caesura,

no continuance.

You’ll need us forever.

We will not be found,

misplaced feelings and

emotions of bereavement will

take the place of a giggle,

your snort, your filmy

hair comes to mind

for a split second,

golden tawny,

always gone.

You will love us,

with a kind of passion

and fixation

to alarm others when

disclosed.

Uneasy,

you’ll hide the scar

inflicted inside a

glass heart shattered

into radiant pieces.

You will need us like water

in the desert,

like blood in your veins,

we’ll flood from your eyes

in the tears coming late at

night, ceaseless and

cleansing.

Our love was the best to

be had or known,

for any price.

You paid it, yielding

and now eternally

seeking for reunification

with your other halves,

you will hang on your

tree and die silent,

for the while,

the long eternal aisle,

down which your heart

will crawl to seek some

sentiment, some echo

of what promised bond

you all three shared,

once upon a time.

In the Grotto

We meet in the grottos

these days,

During the Global Pandemic

while in the binary,

between the bits, the 1s and zeros

flashes in the pan

Low, deep below ground

in electron chatter

in stacks of cabinets

lights flash and dash

through mile after mile of

stolid gleaming steel,

Where we are

for most of our days.

We clasp hands in the grotto,

spectral and ghostly,

during some virtually gaming,

billing and cooing turtles

sharing text or shopping

while miles from home.

There we congregate around wheels

of tape, among wafer circuit

panels and clamped fiber optic

cables, never knowing each other, nor touching

ever in the open air.

We are dead

in Mamman’s exquisite world.

Mesmerized, we focus

on arrays of cold screens,

Touch feature-activated–

dead and buried alive!




Mary Khazak Grant, 65 (B.A. Psych., M.S. Educ.-Deaf Studies) has been an artist, poet and hobby crafter from an early age.  She now works as a teacher for the Rochester Public Schools. Before coming to Rochester in 2009, she spent most of her life on Long Island, New York.  Before becoming a teacher, Mary spent over twenty years in the fields of print and publishing, working as a skilled typist, typesetter, commercial paste-up artist, assistant art director and production person.  As an independent entrepreneur, she owned and managed Satellite Text Design, a desktop publishing business for over 12 years.  After returning to college in middle age, she completed several degrees, and became a special educator of children.  These include a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook in 1998, and a Master of Science degree in Communication Disorders awarded in 2003 from Adelphi University, where she graduated summa cum laude.  She is a member of the Honorary Education Society Kappa Delta Pi as well as a permanently certified teacher of the deaf from the Council for Education of the Deaf. Mary is an accredited teacher of Yoga Sciences. Her professional career is coupled with hobbies in crochet, marquetry and book illustration. She is the self-published author of over 15 books.