LETTER TO MY BRAND NEW GRANDDAUGHTER, DANI MARCELLA

Dearest Dani,

you are only

two days

old and now

the wheel

of time has

come loose

inside your grandmother’s

spinning mind

and suddenly

everything has

kind of come

unhinged, 

fast and past

have moved forward

and backward 

and stopped.

Dani, in my head

I see you

as the sweet

little human

pearl of flesh you are,

but also, quite suddenly,

at the same time,

I'm seeing you as a 

grande dame, a great

grandmother

yourself,

you

even older than me,

you becoming

someone akin

to my dad

who is 93, a great grandfather

living out the twilight of his life.

Such a darling little

divine face you

have today, you are a miracle and a

heavenly blessing and a gem

and honestly

words don’t begin

to capture the

magical mystery

that has brought your

arrival.

I sit here on an

August day

in 2019.

The sun drifts

In and out

between

the clouds.

The air after

the rain is

cool and clean

and breezy.

And I pray

that this poetry may

help me to find

the courage to do

what I need to

do for my dear

father, who is not

having an easy time

of living or dying these days,

it’s so sad and heartbreaking.

He says over and over

that he would like to

die. But I would

rather think

of him living

if only just to meet you.

I would rather

eradicate death

from this moment

from this poem

and do what TS Eliot

did in his famous

poem “The Four Quartets,”

that is, find the “still point” of time:

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

I am

thinking of

you meeting

Dad when time is conquered,

when both of

you are 93, both of you are great

grandparents.

There is something

comforting in

thinking about

that meeting.

It takes life

and death

and tumbles

them together

so that they

come out calm.

It takes the sting

out of thinking

about my father’s death.

Instead, you two

would be sitting

on a wooden bench

in a late summer

garden, the bee balm

past but the roses and

bleeding heart and lilies

and black eyed Susans

still in bloom.

“Hello Ric,” you would say

as you put your cane aside

and sat down beside him.

And he would smile and

reach for your

delicately veined hand

and he would say,

“My darling Dani, did

you know that you

were named for

my beloved

wife, DENA?

Next month, on

September 17, 2019,

we would have been

married seventy, yes, 70

years. Oh that

used to seem

like so much time,

such a long long

ago but now that

I’m 93 and you are too

it isn’t much

time at all.”

And he would set one

hand gently on your head

and recall all the cascading

rolls of black shiny hair

that Dina had back on her wedding day.

And Dani, reaching

into a satin handbag,

you would say,

“Ric, do you remember

the poet T.S. Eliot?

That man would understand

the two of us meeting

like this today, so perhaps

I need to read you just a little from his

famous poem, “Burnt Norton,” the first of

the "Four Quartets."

Ric would smile and lean close to Dani

and he would be able to hear.

“Here is how it begins," she’d say:

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.”

Then Dani would smile, and move

a stray gray hair from her forehead

and Ric would reach for her hand again,

just the way my sister Karen has

been doing of late whenever she

visits my father. 

And in those hands grasping,

the generations would

connect and collapse into

one time one place one

space of Infinite LOVE. 

Indeed time would be

conquered as we all

sat in the present moment

reveling in the garden and each other

and wondering

but not worrying where time went without us.