Category: Family

The expansion of the universe
is accelerating

my granddaughter
reaches for her shadow
and realizes
she is the shadow

oh, slow down
though every new
is celebrated
it takes you further away

faster, faster, faster

He carries the horizon
on his shoulders
his knees are bent
days slip from his pocket
like bits of paper and lint

I won’t let go, he says, not yet
and tucks a cloud beneath the mountains
tips the sun like a hat

He takes my hand and traces the stars
leaves a thumbprint on the moon
gathers the ocean to my ear

I reach up on my toes
wrap my arms around his chest
all the way to China

I loved you last
barely a whisper against my cheek
before you were rushed
and wired behind glass
to fight for every breath
heartbeat, flutter of your eyes
you held me in awe

a protector of the weak
friending the broken boy that lost
the girl curled into herself
the mother that almost forgot to love
I hold my breath
as your heart races wide open

your hands, once too small
to wrap around my thumb
rise above, beyond
my dreams for you
as you suspend
the natural pull of gravity
I am in awe

and think of Kipling’s If –

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

My mother has a story
a beginning, a middle, an end
and I’ve memorized all the good parts

My mother’s house leans to one side
as if listening to something busy underground
worms loosening the soil,
mice combing roots, beetles
tunneling down, down, down

I wander room to room
measure the give of the floorboards
under my bare feet
and listen for whispers settled beneath the wood

I cradle my mother’s words,
scratched on a drug store receipt
I fold the slip of paper
over and over
smaller and smaller
cut my fingertips on the crease

if my grandfather is my father
    am I a sister or an aunt
    a daughter or a mother
    a woman or a monster

Some folks linger over secrets
like a Sunday meal
they nibble, they chew
they lick words from their fingers
others swallow whole and spit out the ash

My grandmother cooks
enough to eat for days
she rubs the chickens clean with ash,
rids disease she says,
wipes the mites out, she says

I think
If I just had some of that
I could fix everything

The hospital plays the first measures of Brahms lullaby
every time a baby is born

I breath the melody
cradling the halls
the powder, the milk breath, the promise

I pull my chair near to you
daughter to father
your body lies fragile,
teasing the monsters under the bed

It’s late
you talk of our time in Newfoundland
the Newfies
their toughness, their resilience
their thickness,
shoulders pushing into twelve foot waves
rowing deep into the bay’s cold belly

The Newfs, the children
running barefoot into Stephenville,
soles calloused
heels honed true on dirt roads,
and paths, and floors
all day, all night
all spring, all summer,
until early winter curled their breath

You ask me to straighten your socks
a request so simple, so small

I crack my knuckles for this solo concerto
study the seam cresting each toe
until you smile
and I spin the next hour
throwing shadow puppets against the wall
trying to catch your light with my fingers

Your heart quivers,
the room becomes an auditorium
the curtain yanked on its metal track
nurses rush to their instruments
tuning C sharps and B flats
playing your IVs like a symphony of strings

It’s quite again
I put my foot to your foot
they are so much the same
and it hurts
the allusion of tomorrow,
of next time,
of soon

She planted marigolds
behind white plastic edging
carnival poms mugging for the sun
the scent of aged rubber
deflecting mosquitos
ignorant of white suburban ways
the DDT truck rolling up the lane

but they return each year
the marigolds, the mosquitos
thick as sweat in midwest July
as if winter never happened
flowers never beheaded,
insects never dropped dead
in ten days

She worked the patch of garden
kneeling before her blossoms
as if
English formal
Cape Cod nonchalance
Maui hothouse splendor
everything
she imagined marigolds
dreamed of being