Valerie Bacharach
Valerie Bacharach’s writing has appeared or will appear in: Vox Populi, The Blue Mountain Review, EcoTheo Review, Minyon Magazine, One Art, The Ilanot Review, Poetica, and Northern Appalachian Review. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Absence
Wind stirs ferns, a brilliant jay flies into juniper branches, its feathers as blue as the berries. Russian
sage, thyme and mint release scent into air. Euphorbia blossoms are small suns, their centers red
as the cardinal that stares at me as I stare back at him. My neighbor stalks her yard, talks on her
phone about someone’s mom who has bad knees, and now my mother with her arthritic bones and
straining heart visits from the World to Come. I wish again to alter the past, reconnect the neurons
in her brain, soothe her heart’s frenetic beats, but then everything else would change. My wishes
will not affect the hawk’s scree, the high clouds against cobalt sky. My mother’s ghost stays with
me, as sun moves through leaves, casts shadows on grass, on my body. She has no shadow now,
only the translucent shape of mother. I sip my tea, its taste of lemon and ginger on my tongue as
my husband clips fading blossoms from the rhododendron.
Birthday Portrait, Mother
My mother’s coincided with Thanksgiving, which made the holiday all about her. November 28,
Sagittarius, a constellation in the southern sky, its western border the winter solstice. Not that my
mother cared about skies or stars. Once we sat on her balcony, smoked cigarettes at twilight,
downtown Columbus arrayed before us. Look what I’ve achieved. And she meant her condo with
its wall of glass, her St. John suits, her Mercedes the color of midnight. Maybe she also meant me.
Was motherhood somewhere on her list? Now it is the day after Thanksgiving, four years after she
died. My husband and I visit our son and son-in-law, hike a ravine trail near Blacksburg. Cascades
of water like stair steps bisect the land. Around us, sycamores with their ghostly trunks, a few
hickory trees wear crowns of bronze. If bronze was music, it would sound deep, like church bells
in an old Italian town. My mother wasn’t keen on anything old, but by God, she loved a good
party. Presents wrapped in glossy paper, whiskey in a heavy glass, mashed potatoes and turkey.
Prantl’s burnt almond torte for dessert, all of us gathered around the flame of her. She picked at
meat from the bird’s carcass, her mouth lipstick-smeared, her laugh bouncing off walls, fingers
stained with grease.
