Tower of Silence
Patrick T. Reardon | Poetry, Summer 2024
Black masked,
black hatted, black covered,
pandemic walled, she
pulls her homeless luggage
through dead leaves along Ashland Avenue,
looking like no tourist to sun
queueing for the jumbo plane,
looking armored and defended,
as a wall of Jerusalem
as the Roman siege enters another month
and the flesh of children is dear,
looking to protect all inside the wheeled baggage:
cleaned clothing, discriminate documents,
two dog skulls, a badger bone,
assorted sheep bones, small bones of water voles,
owl pellets of tiny bones and feathers,
scales and bits of fur, vomited up and out,
telling herself this story:
The King of Kings, my father,
speaks to Khana his daughter as follows:
I learn
that you are not obeying my orders
in all respects.
Inasmuch as you have kept clean,
I praise you.
But inasmuch as you disregard
my intentions for you,
I shall give to you,
if you do not change,
the proof of a wronged heart.
In childhood, she grew up
at the parish boundaries, alone,
her mother avoided by cul-de-sac women
for her garden of valueless growing green:
redshank, gold of pleasure, water-finger grass,
black henbane, mistletoe, corn spurry,
wild rice adorned with smut,
many imported from other realms.
She had no brother.
One plant, tall and nearly unflowered,
the girl called tower of silence.
When she swung over her head
her father’s bullroarer
—sneaked from his hallowed office,
sneaked from some tabernacle
in Australia or Mali or America—
its throated airplane moan
was a wall through the beauty,
undesired by neighbors,
beautiful and ugly in its oddity.
When the Mede came,
I was to be handed over
a cut-glass trophy.
At the Andersonville McDonald’s corner table,
walled by windows on two sides,
her mask down,
her Egg McMuffin nearly done,
she strains to re-hear
Kathleen’s misted air
crooned at the edge of the crib
after back-rubbing,
a sorrowed tale of four kings,
and, by the river of Clark Street,
she refuses to weep.
___________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“In an old rock, the footprints of a monkey or the wiggles of a snake are the impression that the creature left behind indicating something about the creature. “Tower of silence” is one of a lot of impressions that I am leaving behind, indicating something about me, perhaps the rhythm in my head or the translation that my eyes carry out regarding what they see or the gut knowledge of fellow-feeling. Fossils that are found in stone are the impressions of creatures from thousands or billions of years ago. The impressions I leave behind won’t last anywhere near that long.”
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry, worked for 32 years as a Chicago Tribune reporter. He has published six poetry collections, including Darkness on the Face of the Deep, Salt of the Earth and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, Rhino, Commonweal, Poetry East and other journals.
Tower of Silence
Patrick T. Reardon | Poetry, Summer 2024
Black masked,
black hatted, black covered,
pandemic walled, she
pulls her homeless luggage
through dead leaves along Ashland Avenue,
looking like no tourist to sun
queueing for the jumbo plane,
looking armored and defended,
as a wall of Jerusalem
as the Roman siege enters another month
and the flesh of children is dear,
looking to protect all inside the wheeled baggage:
cleaned clothing, discriminate documents,
two dog skulls, a badger bone,
assorted sheep bones, small bones of water voles,
owl pellets of tiny bones and feathers,
scales and bits of fur, vomited up and out,
telling herself this story:
The King of Kings, my father,
speaks to Khana his daughter as follows:
I learn
that you are not obeying my orders
in all respects.
Inasmuch as you have kept clean,
I praise you.
But inasmuch as you disregard
my intentions for you,
I shall give to you,
if you do not change,
the proof of a wronged heart.
In childhood, she grew up
at the parish boundaries, alone,
her mother avoided by cul-de-sac women
for her garden of valueless growing green:
redshank, gold of pleasure, water-finger grass,
black henbane, mistletoe, corn spurry,
wild rice adorned with smut,
many imported from other realms.
She had no brother.
One plant, tall and nearly unflowered,
the girl called tower of silence.
When she swung over her head
her father’s bullroarer
—sneaked from his hallowed office,
sneaked from some tabernacle
in Australia or Mali or America—
its throated airplane moan
was a wall through the beauty,
undesired by neighbors,
beautiful and ugly in its oddity.
When the Mede came,
I was to be handed over
a cut-glass trophy.
At the Andersonville McDonald’s corner table,
walled by windows on two sides,
her mask down,
her Egg McMuffin nearly done,
she strains to re-hear
Kathleen’s misted air
crooned at the edge of the crib
after back-rubbing,
a sorrowed tale of four kings,
and, by the river of Clark Street,
she refuses to weep.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“In an old rock, the footprints of a monkey or the wiggles of a snake are the impression that the creature left behind indicating something about the creature. “Tower of silence” is one of a lot of impressions that I am leaving behind, indicating something about me, perhaps the rhythm in my head or the translation that my eyes carry out regarding what they see or the gut knowledge of fellow-feeling. Fossils that are found in stone are the impressions of creatures from thousands or billions of years ago. The impressions I leave behind won’t last anywhere near that long.”
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry, worked for 32 years as a Chicago Tribune reporter. He has published six poetry collections, including Darkness on the Face of the Deep, Salt of the Earth and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, Rhino, Commonweal, Poetry East and other journals.