Tony Hoagland

Wasteful Gesture Only Not

Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills. She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass marks off the place where the memories are kept, like a library book namedDorothy. Some of the chapters might be:Dorothy: Better Bird-Watcher Than Cook; Dorothy, Wife and Atheist; Passionate Recycler Dorothy, Here Lies But Not. In the summer hills, where the tall tough grass reminds you of persistence and the endless wind reminds you of indifference, Ruth brings batches of white roses, extravagant gesture not entirely wasteful because as soon as she is gone she knows the deer come out of the woods to eat them. What was made for the eye goes into the mouth, thinks Ruth to herself as she drives away, and in bed when she tries to remember her mother, she drifts instead to the roses, and when she thinks about the roses she sees instead the deer chewing them— pale petals of the roses in the dark warm bellies of the sleeping deer— that’s what going to sleep is like.