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Pleading for Sylvia's Last Poem
--Upon seeing the independent film Sylvia in 2003
Poet friends warn me against pointing a pen at Sylvia,
her magic too great, this shaman, this woman who uses words
like a wand. But a muse, not one that breathes the same ether
as Sylvia's, not even a muse but a brute, insistent, a chronic
nightmare, forces me to revisit that moment after lovemaking,
between the time Ted and Sylvia, Sylvia and Ted, entwine
like a marble sculpture of Laocoon, coiled serpent limbs,
and that pause before this dawn when Sylvia folds a bleached
towel to cushion her head, the oven ready. This expectant space.
This moment. I pack our wagon, pile shabby baggage
where children squealed and bickered only that morning,
hum by the time I get to Phoenix. A futile deed. Sylvia
never allowed herself such drivel. Detached, no cry for sympathy
the critics said. That time between decision and duty, that last confusion,
her head upon her laureate's chest, believing in his love for her,
perhaps understanding how her own conjured images of faithlessness
compelled his infidelity, her defenses melted now, April slush.
Then this, her first unsummoned pain, She abhors the irony
of his constancy to his lover's pregnancy with two of his and her own
in the room beyond, their cheeks flushed in sleep, she and they flotsam,
rising, falling on the surface of his needs with no watery vein to guide her
elsewhere. If she had poured self pity onto a page, just before
that moment when she places an offering on an alter to her girls,
closes and tapes their door, those words would not be but gestures, sodden
grass accepting whomever's footprints. Knowing her heart, the rest
of us might careen our aging Oldsmobiles down mountain curves,
feeling foolish, never turn back, never regret that Lady Lazarus
still breathes and Sylvia might understand the world does, indeed,
- listen to her poems.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, THIS IS THE PLACE, won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction, HARKENING, won three. She is a columnist for The Pasadena Star News, Home Decor Buyer and several websites. Learn more at http://carolynhowardjohnson.com. (3/1/04)
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