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