MEMORIES: HELENE

AN OVERDUE NOTE

(For Helene)

All right, Helene, here is a poem

About our salad days as wives

Of graduate students, housed in adjacent

Twenty-foot trailers next to the

University stadium.  “On Wisconsin”

Energized our weekends.  Saturday mornings

Over cups of coffee, I asked you

What it was like playing clarinet

In Phil Silver’s All Girl Orchestra,

And envied the separate vacations you

And your husband took to visit relatives.

You tried to make me read Karen

Horner, for whom I think you named

A daughter.  You were the first and most

Liberated woman I’ve known.  We’re talking

Now about the forties.  You asked me how

I grew my hard shell.  I counted all

The closed doors in my parents’ house.

When we had children, your four,

My five, your milk and affection

Flowed like sap.  You were not

Strict about toilet training.  You

Were as self-fulfilled as a redwood

Sheltering sprouts.  They tell me when

You died of breast cancer, you made

The parting bearable for all your brood.

You were always ahead of me, Helene.