MY BOOK NAMED “SAM”
by Joanna Gilman Hyde
The Hawk Deck 10:45am
Two years ago I spent
an entire afternoon
shredding five copies of a 364-page manuscript
I wrote after My Mother died
I set up the shredder from My Husband’s office
and opened the first of five bottles of beer
In those next seven hours
There went all the sections, chapters
ten pages at a time
with the shredder quitting every twenty minutes —
There went the first chapter
of My Tragic Brother overlapping
My Mother’s diagnosis
October 2, 1991
of a malignant brain tumour —
There went the chapters on living
with Her Illness and Decline
There went the chapter on The Death
March 27, 1993
There went the chapter on The Cremation
with The Chickadee’s Visit
There went Me
on no sleep
for four days — There went
The Shower of Silver Lights
on March 31st, 1993
There went The Little Doctor
calling Me a “Seer” on April Fool’s Day —
There went The First Depression
There went The Magical Moment
October 22, 1993 with The Little Doctor
There went The Telepathic Message
with Him : Dr David Hamilton Wilson
There went My Second Pregnancy —
The Baby Girl I Dreamt Up —
infant I breast fed until She was two*
There went the section on writing the book
and getting literally lost in My Work
on a rented computer
There went subsequent depressions
Dreams of The Little Doctor
There went forever, maybe,
the description of My Childhood Parrot “Sam”
whose faulty clipping job I attempted
at My age of eleven which left him
unable to fly in My Bedroom
(which for some reason I didn’t want Him to do)
but left Him able only to veer off in sickly circles
until I had to give Him up to another little girl
when He became a problem at the Canadian/US border
at each summer crossing
Finally there went the last line of the book
which I will always have, written in June of 1996
as a married woman:
“The Bird In My Hand Is Worth Two In My Bush”
–
*Daughter Eliza now looking for possible surviving copy
2:00pm — Daughter Eliza FOUND IT in My Stepmother’s farmhouse in Vermont
Joanna Gilman Hyde 