House of Heaven – a poem by Alison Townsend

   House of Heaven
                             “My favorite house is my mother”
					   Haya Alyan

Sometimes, when caught in the jaws 
of fear or trouble, I talk with my mother 
in a quiet room in my heart. We are in a house 
where I have never lived but which I know well—
chintz armchairs, a fireplace, a four-poster bed, 
and large, mullioned windows cranked open 
on woods and fields. And my last cat, alive 
in his plush tuxedo, there on the window 
seat overlooking all that green. I understand 
that this is heaven, though I do not know 
why I am allowed to see it now, no distance 
here between dead and living hearts. My mother 
is in the room, and I am, too, though I am also 
in my world, so far away from hers. I ask 
her questions, seeking reassurance, and she tells 
me exactly what I need to know. Our voices blur 
inside my body until I cannot tell if what I understand 
is my own wisdom or what she has become in me, 
these sixty years since her death. But that doesn’t 
really matter. What matters is that she is here 
and I am, too. My heart is in my body. 
And my body knows what it knows. 
Night comes and goes, dawn pinks the sky, 
the cat sleeps, wakes, purrs his bass rumble. 
And still we talk. I am always rested in this place 
where everything is holy and everything is safe, 
the rise and fall of our voices like quiet music 
reminding me that all shall be well, no matter 
what happens. I trace the stitches in her patchwork 
quilt the way I did as a girl, everything so real 
I can feel my pulse beating in one finger. 
When I rise to leave, she cradles my face 
in her hands for a moment before they drop 
into the wild, blue floral of her skirt, hushed 
as sleeping doves. And then I am alone again, 
my heart my own house, in a different room, 
this other place, where I must live without her.

Alison Townsend’s books include the PEN/America shortlisted memoir, The Green Hour, Persephone in America, and The Blue Dress. Recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays, she is professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.