These three poems by Cordelia Hanemann explore the poignancy of loss and the intricacies of grieving in fraught and imperfect relationships…
by: Cordelia Hanemann
The Dream and the Waking
Do not, after waking, look out the window
if you wish to remember your dream.
A window is one world, the dream another.
— Jacqueline Winter Thomas
Yes, windows obscure what we remember
but what we remember is a dream
and vanishes in our waking
even as the sun creeps across the lawn.
Yes, the dream evaporates
even as inklings shadow my thoughts,
and I look for you elsewhere
though I know you are gone.
So many names, we wake
with from our dreams and fantasies,
the names of the gone : mother/ father/
sister/ brother/ husband // even those
who live still but are gone from our lives,
lives shaped less by dreams
than by what lies outside the window.
If I loved you, and I believe I did,
even here after all this time
after you have been gone a long time
the inklings linger and betray.
All this time and even now your voice
reaches : a tenderness and a mocking
it was tendentious : even your sweetness,
your childish teasing, your joy.
Were you looking for a mother,
and I always suspicious of tenderness,
the mocking rather familiar.
Then, how you forgot it all
how I have missed it.
We had something : a friendship
if nothing else and for a long time trust.
Love, I think, has many faces,
and though the streets you walked,
the houses we lived in
the places we have been all
have forgotten you / us.
I do not forget—even standing
at the window looking out
as I whisper your name
against the glass.
my old mother reconciled to a dis-semblance of complacency by years of living alone in a lonely town now empty of all the old friends and family and the now alien space of a place not her own / her oncoming deafness meals shared in the intimacy of strangers foods not her own / not her own bed the muffled sounds of conversations somewhat heard but barely understood I come for her / her daughter/ I who am I after so long an absence off living my own life / hers a vacancy I touch the wrinkles of her cheeks those hands hers so dear no tears so little recognition, an eclipse begetting a strange darkness
Homage to the Colonel My father, the colonel, seemed to have martial origins, certainly a military bearing, stood on perpetual alert, expecting instantaneous obedience, a plethora of yes-sirs, thank you very much. He wore his atten-hut like a Victorian corset designed to configure brave tin soldier, decked out in dress blues, braid and epaulets, boasting bars of medals, the purple heart hung around his neck like a noose. A casualty of American wars. His wound: get ready-aim-fire, kill to forget who you are: obey, obey, obey, yes sir! But once the little boy of him leaked out to play dodge-ball with two sons and neighborhood kids in the cul-de-sac in Arlington. Where now he can rest, knowing for sure, he'll never be called up again for Bataan or Korea or Viet Nam or Kuwait or Iraq, Iran, Syria, Ukraine or Lebanon, Palestine. Rest, my Lt. Col. Daddy. Rest at last, salute, salut, and I will play Mozart's Requiem, not Washington Post at your gravesite.
Cordelia Hanemann, writer and artist, currently co-hosts Summer Poets, a poetry critique group in Raleigh, NC. Retired English professor emerita, she conducts occasional poetry workshops and is active with youth poetry in the North Carolina Poetry Society. She is also a botanical illustrator and lover of all things botanical. She has published in numerous journals including, Atlanta Review, Laurel Review, and California Quarterly and others; in several anthologies including best-selling Poems for the Ukraine and her chapbook. Her poems have been performed by the Strand Project, featured in select journals, won awards and been nominated for Pushcarts. She is now working on a novel about her Cajun roots.
