When you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign
—Eudora Welty
When she looks – everything's a sign:
lamplight's mimetic flickering hiss
as she lumbers along a road cluttered
with hunks of debris from recent rain. Walking
the rutted edge (headlights on blacktop
grope the distance, disappear), she walks
until she finds her walk slowed, her walk
stopped, and before her – a sign –
a baby carrier. She pulls back the top;
it's the same pattern, same model, as his –
as her son's. She grabs it, starts walking,
wondering where in her cluttered
house she will put it, the house so littered
with gear and toys from well-wishers. 'Don't walk'
the red hand says. Stop walking?
she thinks, terrified she'll find another sign.
She thinks of his plump heart. His
breath brushes her shoulder and she stops.
The empty carrier on her arm, at the top
of her steps she fishes her pockets for a clatter
of keys, the carrier so heavy. She bears this
in the dark, and believes she has walked
into, and out of, the light, walking
this empty carrier into the breathless sigh
of her life. She holds this sign,
wonders what it means. But the sun doesn't stop;
the awful sun rises, her walking
failing to delay the night, or her heart's stutter
of longing for the stumbling walk
from bed to crib. The stars kiss
her forehead, and disappear. The kiss
leaves a stain that neither fades, nor does she desire
it to. She touches her belly, walks
the room end to end. She cannot stop,
she cannot wake up. The useless ladder
of crib-rungs cages the air – vacant as her walk,
as the hiss of her sigh; as desire
that drives her to walk the clock nonstop
for matter that is neither here, nor in the ether of talk.
Cati Porter is a poet, reviewer, and editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from kaleidowhirl, Literary Mama, MotherVerse, Poetry Midwest, Poetry Southeast, and in the anthologies White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Mothering (Demeter Press), Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel—Second Floor (No Tell Books), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She lives in Riverside, California, with her husband and two young sons. You may read more of her poetry here and here.
