for janet

One of my other mothers is dying.

I first met Janet when she was hired to be the ESL teacher on our team of middle school teachers in 1993 (or somewhere thereabouts). She came from a background of civil disobedience and power to the people and Pete Seeger songs and a hippy-live-in-a-bus-and-make-your-own-yogurt world. It was a world of 60's activism I was sorry I had missed. I doubt there is a kinder, gentler soul in all the world.




Winter Solstice of 1994 (I think) I played matchmaker during a party at my house. From that day forward, there was one entity.......

"Janet and JohnRoy"











When Janet was diagnosed with breast cancer, my mother was there for her, providing both practical advice and hopeful inspiration. While my mother lay dying, Janet was there by her bedside for the last 36 hours, documenting it all in a notebook for me. She was the one who called and said, "You need to come. Now." I missed my mother's actual death by about 10 minutes, even still.

One of my other mothers is dying.
And I cannot be at HER bedside.
All I have to offer is a poem.
This one's for you, dear Janet:


one day

i will walk
naked
from my castle

i will walk in silence until
i reach the precipice----
there will be no need for Hansel and Gretel’s desperate crumbs or
Orpheus's doubtful glance

perhaps not a cliff then, but rather a retrospective footpath
helixing down
around a balcony of passions
past a circus of trees
under a moon of souvenirs

and i will walk
shedding my cloak of outstretched arms
pulling back my veil of angular tears

the little princes will never know
that i am gone
because love grows backwards
and they will run---

run! run!

to the castle
to their futures