(LYRIC PROSE)
A GLINT IN PARCHMENT
JAN SCHMIDT
A GLINT IN PARCHMENT
JAN SCHMIDT
I
It was the money plant that pointed the way. The brown stems were brittle and ready to snap at the touch and the pods thinned like a layer of flaking, tanned skin. But you grabbed a branch, broke the stalk, shook it, the brown flat seeds floating into your open palm. You peeled the sheath of another small parchment oval away and there was a slight glimmer, a hint of muted pearl like a single streak of white light on a gray sea.
II
It was the money plant that pointed the way. You remember searching for it in bramble and weeds, in blackberry patches, and stands of glossy evergreen bushes. It pushed its way out into the air, ready to be plucked. Your son at three tugged the brown stalks until they gave way, and then he held the cool silk oval to his cheek, soft as tissue paper. And you remember that you both carefully pulled away the outer browned layers and there was the silver, untouched, glimmering in the sun. That was thirty years ago.
III
And later each time when you went to the bay, when your son was five and seven and thirteen, you searched for the money plant, looked for it against gray picket fences, weeds on the side of the road, stands of rose hips. You looked for it as the ocean turned violet, midnight or fresco blue. You watched a wash of silver shadow the water, but the plant was not there. The money plant had disappeared. The floating seeds and silver white discs gone.
IV
Then you return to a cottage by the sea when you are sixty-five, return to watch the light on the bay. The flecks of silver turned to liquid streaks that sparked in the sun. A vision that brought delight and awe. A comfort at a time when the only certainty was flux and change. You accept so much even the ache in your gut. The friends lost to cancer, the mother gone, the son gone from home, a wanderer never to return. You see them. You see their shadows passing through your body in nightmares. The screams of your mother, her leaden shuffle before death; the blank eyes of your father in the midst of dementia; the friend’s crow-like voice on the telephone days before he died. These memories flood your mind as you stare at the sea.
V
You walk back to the cottage, expecting nothing. Then you see it. The money plant, darkened by fall, more brittle than in early summer. You break off a stem, peel the browned film away---peel each side carefully because there are cuts in the oval and some pods are broken and ragged. You find one untouched by wind or rain. Pull away the sheaths. And there it is. A small parchment oval. Yellow white with a hint of silver. You break off several more that are intact. And when you blow against the pods, they rustle but don’t crack off the stems. They flutter in the air like translucent wings.
VI
The money plant points the way.
There is a silver sheen that stops your breath.
A glint that erases time.
I
It was the money plant that pointed the way. The brown stems were brittle and ready to snap at the touch and the pods thinned like a layer of flaking, tanned skin. But you grabbed a branch, broke the stalk, shook it, the brown flat seeds floating into your open palm. You peeled the sheath of another small parchment oval away and there was a slight glimmer, a hint of muted pearl like a single streak of white light on a gray sea.
II
It was the money plant that pointed the way. You remember searching for it in bramble and weeds, in blackberry patches, and stands of glossy evergreen bushes. It pushed its way out into the air, ready to be plucked. Your son at three tugged the brown stalks until they gave way, and then he held the cool silk oval to his cheek, soft as tissue paper. And you remember that you both carefully pulled away the outer browned layers and there was the silver, untouched, glimmering in the sun. That was thirty years ago.
III
And later each time when you went to the bay, when your son was five and seven and thirteen, you searched for the money plant, looked for it against gray picket fences, weeds on the side of the road, stands of rose hips. You looked for it as the ocean turned violet, midnight or fresco blue. You watched a wash of silver shadow the water, but the plant was not there. The money plant had disappeared. The floating seeds and silver white discs gone.
IV
Then you return to a cottage by the sea when you are sixty-five, return to watch the light on the bay. The flecks of silver turned to liquid streaks that sparked in the sun. A vision that brought delight and awe. A comfort at a time when the only certainty was flux and change. You accept so much even the ache in your gut. The friends lost to cancer, the mother gone, the son gone from home, a wanderer never to return. You see them. You see their shadows passing through your body in nightmares. The screams of your mother, her leaden shuffle before death; the blank eyes of your father in the midst of dementia; the friend’s crow-like voice on the telephone days before he died. These memories flood your mind as you stare at the sea.
V
You walk back to the cottage, expecting nothing. Then you see it. The money plant, darkened by fall, more brittle than in early summer. You break off a stem, peel the browned film away---peel each side carefully because there are cuts in the oval and some pods are broken and ragged. You find one untouched by wind or rain. Pull away the sheaths. And there it is. A small parchment oval. Yellow white with a hint of silver. You break off several more that are intact. And when you blow against the pods, they rustle but don’t crack off the stems. They flutter in the air like translucent wings.
VI
The money plant points the way.
There is a silver sheen that stops your breath.
A glint that erases time.
Jan Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at SUNY New Paltz where she teaches Multiethnic and Diasporic Literature, Holocaust Literature, Women's Literature, Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction and Memoir and Poetry craft classes. Her work has appeared in journals including The Cream City Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Phoebe, and others. She has two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook, The Earth Was Still, was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time, was published by Word Temple Press. Most recently she co-edited with Laurence Carr a collection of works by Hudson Valley women writers entitled A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley.