Extravagant Gesture
I’m not quite sure why this poem speaks to me today. But it does. So I offer it to you. This is not an extravagant gesture, I know, but generous I hope, and not wasted.
Wasteful Gesture Only Not
by Tony Hoagland
Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills.
She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass
marks off the place where the memories are kept,
like a library book named Dorothy.
Some of the chapters might be: Dorothy:
Better Bird-Watcher Than Cook;
Dorothy, Wife and Atheist;
Passionate Recycler Dorothy, Here Lies But Not.
In the summer hills, where the tall tough grass
reminds you of persistence
and the endless wind
reminds you of indifference,
Ruth brings batches of white roses,
extravagant gesture not entirely wasteful
because as soon as she is gone she knows
the deer come out of the woods to eat them.
What was made for the eye
goes into the mouth,
thinks Ruth to herself as she drives away,
and in bed when she tries to remember her mother,
she drifts instead to the roses,
and when she thinks about the roses she
sees instead the deer chewing them–
the pale petals of the roses in the dark
warm bellies of the sleeping deer–
that’s what going to sleep is like.