Martha Deed
Martha Deed’s daughter as a baby
By Martha Deed
When I was thirty years old and certainly old enough to know better, I married a fellow peace activist. Meeting as we did, we knew little of each other's backgrounds. A big mistake. I came from a modest middle class family, but he, it turned out, came from a wealthy, politically-prominent legal and Hollywood family. All of which emerged when his mother was killed in an automobile accident a year after our wedding.
What happened over the next 21 years was a nightmare limned around the edges with the gift of living overseas and raising a wonderful child who died young. For decades, I dared not write about this side of my life, although I was able to lecture and write about the issues of such a life in professional journals where identities are kept confidential.
Now I have outlived most of the protagonists. Now I can exercise the power of survival.
My daughter died in 2009. She was a much-published poet and web artist, and we often collaborated on our work.
These poems are from a collection looking for a home.
After the Trials End
The psychologist who applied
Parent alienation syndrome
to the wrong parent
and years later
rejected the theory as junk
and apologized
too late
is dead
The psychologist who double-billed
awarded custody to the higher-paying parent
destroyed his own records
was found out, investigated and disciplined
too late
is dead
The judge who ruled stolen documents
breaking and entering
are OK
if it’s a custody fight
is dead
The famous lawyer uncle
who wrote a best-selling
autobiography and mentioned
the mother
in such evil terms
a treaty might have happened
if the mother had not decided
reading the book would be harmful
to her mental health
and read the passage too late
is dead
The judge who provided his daughter
a college “year abroad” in France
and was proud of that decision
ignored a mother’s grief
when a father parked their 15 year old child
in France after Summer visitation
then came home alone
left her in France alone
for more than a year
the judge apparently believing
parental kidnapping may sometimes
be benign and unimportant
and who himself was removed
from the city center bench
and to a rural court
(fewer families to be harmed
fewer families equipped
to identify the harm)
too late
would be 93 if still not
dead
The appellate judges
who decided
a court-appointed expert
cannot be sued
for proven malfeasance
leaving a child
with no recourse
but to flee
find the custody underground
take a plane
live with strangers
until she is allowed
to go back home
at 13
The judges
are dead
The mother breathes
The father’s location unknown
The child
is dead
Goldfish
the unattended elevator
in the turn of the century building
Riverside Drive
New York City
the antiwar couple
just back from the posh funeral
at Frank Campbell's
exactly where their mother would want to be
if she ever died
now dead by her family's chauffeur
who had never learned
two objects cannot occupy
the same space
a survivor with a broken neck
laced into a Stryker frame
turned time-to-time
in hospital
the pacifists against the war in Vietnam
carry a goldfish in a plastic bag
(something she could watch move
while she waited to discover
if she would ever move again)
took that elevator
from the third floor to the first
they could have walked down the stairs
but they were tired out from grief
and then
the door forced open
I've got a gun
Take the fish
one pacifist yelled
while the other pacifist
shoved the mugger
now holding the bag of fish
out the door
and the first ran after him and the fish
down the stairs
across the road
and into Riverside Park
where rhododendron bloomed
I don't remember the color of the Hudson
that day
I remember the fish
the man who tried to save it
while the butternut ice cream his mother favored
sat uneaten in the creaking refrigerator's freezer
(Originally published in Verse Virtual)
Paris 1974, Paris 2015
PARIS — The international terrorist and self-professed Marxist revolutionary known as Carlos the Jackal received a life sentence — his third — on Tuesday for a 1974 attack on a Paris drugstore that killed two people and wounded 34. – Benoît Morenne NY Times March 28, 2017
French police have made 10 arrests in connection to the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015. – BBC 26 April 2017
What has the sun said to you, my child ‒
that the world is a dangerous place
and this is a day to stay in bed?
But, No. It said
Do you see the shine of morning dew
on the cobblestone streets
and the spires of Notre Dame
kissing the clouds
The cafes bursting with coffee
and croissants in the hands of kids
on their way to school
on their way to work?
This is a day
the sun said
to take a good walk
along the quay
This is a day to look for a book
to visit the market of live birds
to hear them call
to admire their feathers
shining in the sun
the light flashing on them like sparklers
not like bullets at the newspaper
not like flash grenades
at the grocery store
This I tell you:
Because you heeded the sun,
you will live another day
your survival as accidental
as those held hostage
as those who died
at your grocery store
you did not visit
because you were taking
a walk in the sun
(Originally published in New Verse News)
Mothers’ Watches
Nowhere could it be made more clear
than to compare their mothers’ watches
even the most cursory look
reveals the dangers of crossing over
one is born to a mother who chooses
her L L Bean watch with its black
and silver no-nonsense face
its black leather strap crafted to suit
its left-handed wearer
speaks to durability
survives rough times and death
until it comes to the daughter’s
bureau drawer
battery by battery
intact
but difficult to wear
by the right-handed progeny
and the other
a golden watch
worn around the neck
on a gold vermeille 2 mm rope chain
marked “Italy 925”
marked “Accutron”
hands left free
for raising the finger
to anyone
richer
smarter
or with a more celebrated
husband
child-rearing best left
to servants and a Baptist
private school ‒ raising
a non Bar Mitvahed son
who needed special permission
to read the Old Testament
at graduation
None of which the LL Bean daughter
noticed when she encountered
the Accutron son
in the Civil Rights Movement
It was protest that brought them together
their differences covered over
by politics-in-common
and living far from home
until the day
he took the phone
and soon was saying
in an unfamiliar voice
and language
Yes, Darling
I love you, too,
Beloved
And who was that?
A famous actress
starring in his famous father’s movie
soon to be released
Oh
and followed by after-protest dinners
with servants and impolite debates
with the famous brother-in-law
of the Accutron mother
famous lawyer ‒ known for merciless
aggression against his adversaries
The daughter of the L L Bean watch
failed to see what might lie ahead
should this friendship go awry
which happened when the Accutron mother
died in a car crash and the Accutron
fell upon the L L Bean daughter’s neck
a year after the son’s father
a self-made, modest and kindly man
who by his own means had crossed over
from Midwestern newspaper journalist
to powerful Hollywood producer
died young (at 50) in Beverly Hills
during a hospital strike which would not
have saved his life in any event
but left his Accutron wife
seething and enraged at the desertion
and so ‒ dependent upon the famous lawyer
whose chauffer it was
who drove the car
that killed her
After ‒ the L L Bean watch daughter
wore the son’s dead mother’s
Accutron watch
in the official photo
on the SS France
as she ‒ eager for adventure ‒
endured rough seas
not unlike those ancestors
in their barque
and when seasickness happened
on a rare silk scarf
from the family she married into
it disappeared ‒ another theft ‒
into the laundry’s waves
She wore the watch as they say
through thick and thin
until for some forgotten reason
she placed it carefully in a drawer
with golden chain and gold watch stand
unreasonably pleased
it rested there
for a decade or so
the Accutron in the jewelry drawer
the LL Bean with pens and sundries
until
sickness in the house required
clearing out
especially of what could disappear
The Accutron went out for sale
but did not appear
when less valuable objects were offered
until
it was found at the venue
in a rarely-used safe
then offered
not sold
and returned
many months later
without
a 30 inch Italian 925 Silver Gold Vermeil
2 MM rope chain necklace
now worth far more
than the Accutron watch itself
and joined the mysterious misplacement
of two gold rings
some gold chains
other undocumented pieces
now crossed over
from wearables
to currency
In other words
Theft
Wild Bergamot
You should get a smaller car
the woman said who blocked my exit
from the poetry reading parking place
in a field off the grid on Wheeler Hill.
Rallying to her cause she said
There is no reason for that big SUV
and climbed into her puny Kia
that had me turning and backing
and forwarding and looking and considering
like the days on West 111th Street
on Manhattan's Upper West Side
where six inches longer than the car was all
I needed on those crowded streets
but this was a green grass hilltop
and this was poetry and sunshine
and birds singing in nearby shrubs
and in all that space
the woman with the Kia could find no better place to park
than too close behind my car and nothing better to do
than to make an environmental point on a Saturday afternoon in August.
I need this car
I said
to hold my daughter's power wheelchair
and continued the backing and turning until I freed myself.
She handed me a tiny pink flower.
It's a Wild Bergamot
she said.
Thank you
I said
and she left no doubt thanking herself for being kind
but I knew who was kinder that day ‒ I did not say
dead daughter
(Originally published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
Rubbing of a Lost Child
You find her photo – too late,
the self portrait of the artist daughter,
freed from bed at dawn according to “date created,”
scarred by illness, wrapped in a cloth
from Rio, and an email you never saw
before her death mentions “Rio movie”
and so there was – as usual with her –
a purpose to her self-filmed dance at dawn,
beautiful once more
before this illness
robbed her first of beauty,
then of work, and finally of her life
A rubbing when the print with archival inks
slides across the back of the premium photo sheet
a mistake exposing unprotected colors
to ordinary light which erases and blurs
the child’s features
even as the child herself
has disappeared
