I Love You, What Is Your Name? (Poem by Oliver Smith)

Oliver Smith

Poem: I Love You, What Is Your Name?

< James Oliver Smith, Jr < Writing < Poetry : Poem

I Love You, What Is Your Name?
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I

It had almost been a year since we "come out"
as a heterosexual couple at church,
Cathie's big grin showering us as we sneaked in,
late, to the back pew.

"Of course," she would later say.
"Why didn't I think of that, you two being poets."

Roseann had bought tickets to a concert
for Mother's Day when she saw an announcement
in the bulletin.

I was to meet her at 4:00PM at O'Shaunessy Auditorium,
in the foyer, but I was running late,
hopping into my car at the end of a walk
without going upstairs to my apartment.

Halfway there I remember that I was asked
to bring my camera, for pictures.

We hadn't taken any for a while and it was
a bright, warm day.

I parked on the northwest corner of the campus
and walked quickly to meet Roseann,
who was sitting on the stone steps of the auditorium,
dark glasses riding a grin.

Small groups wandered sidewalks and campus greens,
mothers dressed in Easter drag,
presiding over doting loved ones.

I was ten minutes late according to plans,
but in plenty of time.

Soon, Barb, Anna and Danielle arrived
so we headed for the door,
Roseann passing out our tickets,
worrying about her brother who had not arrived.

She left his ticket with the man
holding a tray sprinkled with stubs
sticking up, names calling out to fingers.

The five of us found our seats in the balcony.
We looked over a well lit, empty stage.

I couldn't help thinking of my daughter
and the time she performed her last
dance recital.

I stood up in the back of the same theater,
holding my cam-corder for hours,
switching batteries as they drained and charged,
the read light on the adapter drifting through the dark
to my awareness as I planned out the availability of tape and energy.

The heat from the battery against my head
grew sweat, pulling time upon my legs
as rehearsals droned on in their persistence.

I had to get my daughter's show down then
because my camera would not be allowed
for the real performance.

That was before glaucoma took my left eye away,
a time when stereo vision was a reality, not a memory;
a time when I worked hard
to honor my daughter's requests;
a time when this auditorium
was the domain of a father
who could see no farther than his eyes.

Roseann held my hand as the lights dimmed
and musicians moved to their places
behind instruments.

Introductory rhythms and harmony drew our minds.

Choral members streamed onto the risers:
male, female, black, white.

We watched for John and Goran
stroll calmly to their own locations, John behind Goran.

The conductor took her place, the choir ready.

Music, in its own bubble
of anticipation grabbed us as hands clapped,
percussion rolled and voices sang.

There were pictures of salvation and joy,
pictures that could warm me if I remembered
ONLY the residue of sentiment.

Roseann was cute in the seat next to me.

I told her that as she clapped,
giving me a reason to believe in salvation
and joy.

Three songs passed.

I was drawn to John and Goran.

Had I ever seen them so expressive before?

They would always smile at church.

Gentleness is the word I feel when I stand next to them
or watch from behind as they sit,
nestled, within each other.

Before Roseann, I would speculate
on how I would enjoy such affection.

Down on that stage they were radiant
as Roseann grew silent to my side in the dark,
in the carousel of sound and light around us.

Like a slim doe in the underbrush
rising from a mat of warm leaves I felt her shoulders
lift into the back of her seat,
as an apparition of intensity, unreal,
then her voice moaned slightly,
crying out to her own dreams.

I thought, perhaps, the spirit of the choir
had taken her away within their robes, holding her.

Her hands clenched tight upon the throat of emptiness.

Her body grew wild with the desire to solidify.

My right arm extended to her back,
before my mouth could fail in asking
some question I couldn't penetrate.

Voices swarmed:
"Mom",
"Rosie",
"She's having a heart attack",
"a stroke",
"a seizure",
"What's happening?"
"someone call 911,"
"do you need help?"

I heard the proclamations and inquisitions.

I pulled my cell phone from its pouch,
handing it to Danielle.
Anna reached out to her mother.

The mask of raw invisibility had been torn.

Roseann and I were center stage
in a tiny room with us at the bottom,
a ring of faces swirling in our confusion.

Mucous streamed from her lips
and air expelled in words siphoned from
cypress draped swamps.

I pulled her to me, calling her with my own breath,
then she collapsed, her head flat upon her chest,
empy, like a glass consumed.

II

I thought she was dead,
Her head bunched up within her chest,
Like fear wadded up and pulsing in my hand.

Anna had left her seat.
"Rosie," she called,
Her hand drawing contact with her mother's arm.

Voices cascaded around me.
Those of Danielle, Barb and others.

"I'm a respiratory therapist," said one voice.
"She has a pulse. She's breathing," he said.

"Lift her head so she doesn't choke," said another.

Others climbed down into my crevice:
"Does she have epilepsy?"
"I'm a police officer."
"Shouldn't you stick something in her mouth
so she doesn't swallow her tongue?"

"Has someone called 911 yet?"
"Let's get her moved out for the ambulance."

All these words knew me.

I knew them, letters following letters.

In other contexts I might have spoken each
and every one of them, but not this time.

I didn't want to feel words upon my tongue
as Roseann hid somewhere underneath and away.

Danielle struggled with my cell phone.

Big men held my beloved like a sack of precious wheat
that would grow into tomorrow.

I followed them.

Danielle asks if I am OK.

I say, "I guess."

That wasn't adequate.
I knew that.

I saw Roseann fly through large arms into light, downstairs,
away from the gospel of music serenading confusion.

They didn't seem to know what to do with her.

Their postures asked her to stand
but Roseann's body took its own path,
begging for the floor.

"Her body seems to seek the ground," someone said,
let her find it."

I heard those words.
They sounded feminine,
but I couldn't see the face that spoke them.

Paramedics rose from the sunlight currents
just beyond the door.

An oxygen mask crept upon her
lost, lethargic face.

A man in a uniform asked us
if we were relatives.

It was then, in that foyer of entertainment,
in the presence of fear and dread,
that I understood how frail our feelings are
in the presence of authority.

Power comes from society.

Rights are dished out like bones
to starving dogs and we all gnaw
on the marrow of our existence,
hanging on to the foliage of tenderness
hiding beneath decaying wood
and crumbling stones.

Roseann's face,
those cheeks I had come to see as soft visions
calling through a stormy night were numb,
giving in to the flash and steel of machines
and emergency protocol.

The voice she had so long wrapped up in harsh
determination was undone,
threaded out on fibers clutching
from dusty carpet veils
drawn dark from a little girl waiting
for grampa's Shetland pony.

As the oxygen fired her eyes she gripped the mask,
pulling it free,
but she was not aware of the large hands
which brought it back.

She was not aware of my profound perplexity
as I realized I was not a relative:
not a spouse,
not a child,
not a sibling,
or a cousin,
or a parent…

just someone who cared
how she slept at night,
free, safe, warm,
someone so easily swept away
by the wave of cultural relevance.

Through all our conversations,
never once had we talked of doctors
or wills or the unexpected.

I didn't have any answers for the milling crowd,
nor myself.

I was just a guy in the collateral noise looking on,
bewildered.

Barb, the lawyer, had the answers.

She sent the ambulance off with a purpose
and she lead us to her car,
where we filed out in silence, in disbelief
to the land of white coats and high technology.

"You can't bring that cell phone in here,
it's a frequency thing,"
someone said in the emergency room.

Roseann was guarded by white shawls
praying their rosaries from sanitized wine.

Her eyes studied us like ancient mystical altars,
as though we were druid priests
welcoming her to a place of ritual.

I held her hand and wished I could
tell her of reality but it was too obscure,
not well defined.

"Who is your doctor?" asked a man from India,
his white robe adorned with the trail of a stethoscope
wrapped in a cartoon blue Vikings cloth,
his dark skin demanding resolution
to our scattered thoughts.

"Do you know where you are?"
"Do you know what day it is?"
"Do you know what happened?"

The questions crawled upon her,
nibbling at the edge of her brain,
but she could only say she didn't know.

"Do you want your shoes off?" a nurse asked.

Roseann lifted her head and stared
at the two black dots at the end of her legs,
unable to navigate the thought through her body.

Anna leaned over her mother, looking down at Roseann,
and asked if she know who she was.

Roseann nodded, then she looked over at me,
from deep within lost eyes and said,
"I love you, what is your name." (1999)

(c) Oliver Smith
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( Count from 08/09/2003 )

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