“Fantaisie” by Donald Platt

This poem is part of CavanKerry’s series for National Poetry Month.  Every day in April, we post a poem from our community of writers.

Fantaisie
by Donald Platt

                           Each person is
a solar system, the bits of birth’s Big Bang orbiting
                           some sun that both attracts

and repels.  Elliptically, my mother orbits her own death,
                           that great shining
ball of fire I cannot look directly at.  She draws closer to it,

                           then pulls away.  She rotates
as she revolves.  Together we write her obituary.  Born.
                           Schooled.  Worked as.

Married to.  Gave birth.  Resided.  Retired.  Is survived by.
                           The old story
we all get to write if we’re lucky, or one that will willy-nilly

                           get written for us.
I leave the day she’ll die blank.  She gives me the notes
                           she wrote last night:

“Funeral in Christ Church and Bill Eakins to preach.
                           Ask Women’s Guild
to serve a simple refreshment.  Give $100 to organist.

                           Give $5,000
to church.  Give $500 to Bill Eakins.  Give $1,000 to women.
                           Give $250

to soloist.  No calling hours.  Only the church service.
                           Nobody
getting up and saying nice things about me.  Everyone

                           has their own
memories—good, bad, and indifferent.  Chief purpose
                           of a funeral

is to pray for the departed.  Also to give comfort
                           to those who grieve.
Call Hickey Funeral Home.”  As an after-thought, she added

                           “Ask Charlene
to play Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie for violin and harp.
                           You’ll need to find

a harpist.”  Everyone needs a harpist to accompany her living
                           and her dying.
No one to turn to but the seated, marble harp player

                           at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, early Cycladic, eleven and a half inches high.
                           He embraces

the D-shaped instrument, whose top is ornamented
                           with the head
of a waterfowl.  Against his right thigh and stone shoulder, he rests

                           the weight
of the instrument.  It has no strings.  His raised right thumb plucks
                           five thousand years of silence.

“Fantaisie” was originally published in the New Ohio Review, Spring 2016.

Donald Platt has published four previous books of poetry, Dirt Angels, My Father Says Grace, Cloud Atlas, and Fresh Peaches, Fireworks, & Guns.  He has been awarded two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New Republic, Poetry, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Southwest Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Southern Review, as well as in three editions of The Best American Poetry. He teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University.