Parachutes and Kisses by Erica Jong Page B

if propelled by the wind from the pit, this elegy to her grandfather (which she had not yet even titled).
    â€œA dream of fantastic horses
galloping out of the sea,
the sea itself a dream,
a dream of green on green,
an age of indolence
where one-celled animals
blossom, once more, into limbs,
brains, pounding hooves,
out of the terrible innocence
of the waves.
    Â 
    â€œVenice on the crest
of hell’s typhoon,
tsunami of my dreams
when, all at once,
I wake at three A.M.
in a tidal wave of love & sleeplessness,
anxiety & dread ...
    â€œUp from the dream,
up on the shining white
ledge of dread—
I dredge the deep
for proof that we do not die,
for proof that love
is a seawall against despair,
& find only
the one-celled dreams
dividing & dividing
as in the primal light.
    â€œO my grandfather,
you who painted the sea
so obsessively,
you who painted horses
galloping, galloping
out of the sea—
go now,
ride on the bare back
of the unsaddled horse,
who would take you
straight to hell.
    â€œGallop on the back
of all my nightmares;
dance in the foam
in a riot of hooves
& let the devil take you
with his sea-green brush;
let him paint you
into the waves at last,
until you fall,
chiming forever,
through the seaweed bells,
lost like the horses of San Marco,
but not for good.
    â€œDown through the bells
of gelatinous fish,
down through the foamless foam
which coats your bones,
down through the undersea green
which changes your flesh
into pure pigment
grinding your eyes down
to the essential cobalt blue.
    Â 
    â€œLet the bones of my poems
support what is left of you—
ashes & nightmares,
canvases half-finished & fading worksheets.
    Â 
    â€œO my grandfather,
as you die,
a poem forms on my lips,
as foam forms
on the ocean’s morning mouth,
& I sing in honor of the sea & you—
    â€œthe sea who defies all paintings
& all poems
& you
who defy
the sea.”
    She’d read this headlong, hurtling, heedless of response, not even stopping when the rabbi sucked in his breath at the mention of “hell.” But now she was feeling more and more as if she had uttered a malediction, not a blessing.
    â€œThe night he died, I scrawled these words at the bottom of the page of poetry: ‘Samuel Stoloff died January 6, 1981. Born in the snow, he died in the snow. He was my beloved grandfather. All those who loved him and his paintings, please pray for his soul. He was ready to die and believed that his consciousness would survive his body. It does.’ ”
    How did she know that? She just knew.
    â€œAll this is true. Last Thanksgiving—which we spent at my husband’s parents’ house (with our little daughter, my grandfather, my sister Chloe and her children, my sister-in-law and her lover)—Papa assured me that he would stay around to watch Mandy.
    â€œ ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘all my life I have been an atheist, but now I am absolutely sure that some form of consciousness survives after death. I will watch Mandy,’ he promised.
    â€œ ‘Papa,’ I asked, ‘will you make me some sign? How will I know you’re there?’
    â€œ ‘I cannot do that,’ he said solemnly, ‘but I promise I will watch Mandy.’
    â€œWhen I was moaning about the lack of information for an obituary that night Papa died, Josh said, ‘One of the neatest things about your grandfather was that he did not hold on to material possessions; he did not cling to the past. He was very Zen in that.’
    â€œAnd it was true. Gradually, he dispersed his paintings; gradually his world shrank from Seventy-seventh Street to Seventy-second Street, from an eight-room apartment, to a four-room apartment, to a two-room apartment, to one bare room in a ‘home’ for adults. He was already far away that last Thanksgiving Day. Under his jacket, he wore a pajama top by mistake and the fly in his pants was gone. His body was nearly a ruin—what with bone