By Ben Pease
The Steeple Bell
My father said it was nice, nice,
that we had a chance to ask
my mother what she wanted
a week before she died:
service at the church, no funeral
home, ask Gail about the song
about the eagles (we never did),
a simple meal, “Bury me next
to my first husband—but not until
you’re dead too, Rod—to mix
our ashes,” and then she pointed at me
from the bed in the living room,
(ghost bed I’d see long after
it was removed) from that quiet mouth
of hell, she said to me
“You’re in charge.”
I tried to stop him
but my father
insisted on asking,
“What do you want to be cremated in
the dress from Ben’s wedding,
or the one from our renewal of vows?”
The closet full of seasonal clothes
and the duck print sleeping bag
where we placed my mother’s ashes
on the high shelf.
What Comes First
There’s no space for warmth here
between the double-paned hospital
window and the drive to the gold coast
where I lay out a sheet of plastic
and cut out rotted windowsills
as the snow hastens and stops
once I’ve made it halfway home
from work early. More hawks
than there used to be however
harried on their watch, the camel
keeping the sheep, the draft horse
eating its grass among the mules.
My wife lets out extended notes
of labor and a handful of my shirt
and after twelve hours of it
the hospital becomes familiar:
a loved one immobilized
in an adjustable bed. Unsure
of the question, I watch
my wife riddle a physical
sphinx and come out of it
with not just her own life.
Once I get to hold my child,
her eyes grey blue, I observe
my mother rising out
of the unconscious, bewildered
by her son become a father.
Ben Pease is the author of the full-length poetry collection Chateau Wichman: A Blockbuster in Verse (Big Lucks Books), a poetry-infused Dungeons & Dragons adventure module called The Light of Mount Horrid (Ghost in the Forest Games), the hybrid illustrated edition Furniture in Space (factory hollow press), and a few chapbooks. He is a co-founder of the Ruth Stone House and Sistrum Books.