Eileen Cleary
KAY AND DEL THAT FIRST MORNING WITHOUT HIM
What it was like to morning into the valley of forget-me-not.
Not waking from sleep so much as into a chasm,
the hours weathering clefts in their spleens, streams
carving them wide — and their boy echoing
through the trailhead. Muffled, distant —through
packed shovels of doubt.
For a brief time, any wind could have been him
rising from his bunk into rockfall,
with no ladder from which to return.
The eggs uncracked on the counter,
coffee gone cold.
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES ON ABC NEWS MARCH 14TH, 1980
Live from a Sacramento living room,
televised before the dawn birds bridged into chorus,
about two weeks after his escape,
in an interview where Steven Stayner sports
a coffee-colored jacket too big for his shoulders
as his parents flank either side of the couch,
Del wearing his beige leisure suit, and Kay
decked in her browniest slacks and lemon sweater vest,
the reporter noting that off-camera,
a lawyer would make sure not to compromise
their abduction case, their son can’t remember
which days during his seven years held captive,
he thought which thoughts and Del admitted
that he’d lost hope, which opposed
what the viewers were told in the lead-in,
so the questions volley to Kay,
who dutifully chirps that she had gone about my merry way
presumably unflummoxed, vacuuming
and packing school lunches for her remaining four.
Eileen Cleary is the author of Child Ward of the Commonwealth and 2 a.m. With Keats. She founded and edits Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books.