As he knelt by the grave of his mother and father <br />the taste of dill, or tarragon- <br />he could barely tell one from the other- <br /> <br />filled his mouth. It seemed as if he might smother. <br />Why should he be stricken <br />with grief, not for his mother and father, <br /> <br />but a woman slinking from the fur of a sea-otter <br />In Portland, Maine, or, yes, Portland, Oregon- <br />he could barely tell one from the other- <br /> <br />and why should he now savour <br />the tang of her, her little pickled gherkin, <br />as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father? <br /> <br />* <br /> <br />He looked about. He remembered her palaver <br />on how both earth and sky would darken- <br />'You could barely tell one from the other'- <br /> <br />while the Monarch butterflies passed over <br />in their milkweed-hunger: 'A wing-beat, some reckon, <br />may trigger off the mother and father <br /> <br />of all storms, striking your Irish Cliffs of Moher <br />with the force of a hurricane.' <br />Then: 'Milkweed and Monarch 'invented' each other.' <br /> <br />* <br /> <br />He looked about. Cow's-parsley in a samovar. <br />He'd mistaken his mother's name, 'Regan, ' for Anger'; <br />as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father <br />he could barely tell one from the other.<br /><br />Paul Muldoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gathering-mushrooms/
