To my mother

Before My Grandfather Died

A little girl walking up the stony
Street, her hair tied in two cream ribbons
Her shoulders exposed to the early, blue
evening. The street lights begin to glow,
but she doesn’t need to be home.

When the blares of an ambulance drills
Through her ears, my mother collects a handful of pebbles
Storing them where no one sees.

I wish that I could take your little
Hand. Lead you far away from 3778 Forest Street
And the black telephone ringing on the wall. Stones
spilling between her fingers.

You wouldn’t have to see the stretcher
Pulling white sheets—like your cotton dress—
Over a man you only had for ten years.
I could lay my sweater over your bony arms
And stroke your dark brown hair.
Tell you that I would be home after school
And you wouldn’t need your own set of keys.
Your mother could work, and we would build feasts
In the avocado kitchen: things that you taught me to make.

You might still smell his fumy cigarettes
On the brocade couches and see the ash trays
Free of smoke stains.
Photos of him placing you on his knee as he promised
You the world.

I will tell you that you are pretty,
And comb the tangles from your doll’s hair.
I will walk you to the bus on the foggy mornings
And stitch up all your busted pocket seams.

Just an image for today. . .

The House Underground

My house is planted underground.
No one hears our whistling tea pot
And no one catches the lavender scent
hanging in the windowsill.

You can press your ear towards the musky earth
and hear the quiet muffles of our lives
like the history a sea shell gives.

Prelude to Pea Coats at the Gym

The gym swayed from its normal gray
to the peak of soft yellows
as five men in long, tweed coats
dappled into the gym.

Their heads buoyed slowly
from left to right
like bobbles on a string.

They spoke in waves
amidst each other as they strolled
around the machines in dress slacks.
Most with white and one with reddish
brown hair stood with hands in their pockets.

The peaceful sentinels huddled
around a treadmill, examining the buttons,
ruminating nothing.

They left lazily against the sweaty rhythm
of students, like a ball of cotton
floating in a whirly wind.

Mourning Dove

I caught a glimpse of the Mourning Dove
dancing with the snow,
an apparition of something holy.
Her cloudy feathers shook
the remaining leaves from the cotton
wood’s branches. Her lamenting call
floating upon my shoulders.