Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers

      Christian Collins CC





Memory Is the Rain that Soothes the Scorched Earth
               —Sue Ann Gleason, “Lemon Brine”


Today, the world is made of sunlight and smoke.
Was this always the case?

How the wreckage wears a child’s face,
carries a doll missing its limbs.

Yesterday, swan boats glided across the pond,
clouds moving swiftly above.

The oily dimpled surface of the lemon
perfumed your fingers.

Time moves like an insomniac.
Rain dances to its own music.

I want to remember you the way 
birds suspend the sky,

the way a pear drops from a branch
warm and forgiving into my hands.

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Anyway
               after George Bilgeres’s “Misting”
 
The lawnmower died
but it’s been resurrected
thanks to a sparkling clean new carburetor.
If only that could be said of my brother
who walked into the rubble of 9/11 a rescuer
and crawled out 8 years later
beset with rare incurable leukemia.
And now the news is my kidneys gone to stage 2.
I’ve never been much good at resuscitating plants,
backing up pick-up trucks, or bullshitting
but I claimed title to “Rhodes Scholar of Worry”
years ago. Well, finally I’ve found an answer:
practice barefoot poetry, pop popcorn for
aroma alone, share chocolate éclairs all winter
long or laughter on any spring-lit day.
Death won’t come any faster (or slower)
because you’re happy,
so be happy anyway.

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​Ionic, Soluble, Vital to Life

Brother, remember when we met
in a dream of Manhattan 
the summer after
you died, 
at The Beatles Laser Light Show
in the Hadyn Planetarium
more than a dozen years ago?

Why haven’t you visited me since?

It could be time moves differently
where you are
or not at all.

If we met again on Central Park West,
would you recognize me?
My hair reads like a paper
with all the newsprint smudged.
Whites of my eyes struck 
with bloodshot lightning.

Or maybe you can see all
from your vantage,
how your sons have become 
beautiful young men, 
your wife’s new car
still adorned with your old 
ham radio call letters 
license plate, 

how the house where we grew up 
is imploding as if
it means to rejoin its clay
to the earth
brick by crumbling brick.

I don’t have much to say,
just want to see you 
healthy again,
all the wrinkles 
unworried from your brow.

I wish I’d known 
back when we were kids
that we could have taken turns
at the oars
when the floods 
of our mother’s rage
poured down upon us
and we fled on separate rafts,
drowned a few times.

It’s possible nothing matters
to the dead
except the living
go on living.

What would you tell me now,
brother, if you could?

That rain from the other side
of the clouds 
sounds like laugher?

That all love 
is salt?




Cat mama, dog mama, sky-watcher, recovering coffee-addict, former New Yorker Lana Hechtman Ayers writes in a room over her garage in Oregon. She leads generative workshops, helps poets assemble their manuscripts, and manages three small presses where she’s fostered over 130 books into the world. Say hello online at LanaAyers.com
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