Mother’s Day 2021
On the Beach, My Mother Comes Ashore
I preserve my sorrow in salt
as she emerges in the spray–
her face reflected in the tide
her eyes the same blue-grey
as the waves.
I know this is not real,
though her laugh
rings in every ship’s bell,
her strength wedged tight
between the fortress stones.
She would tell me that
the crumbling is what makes
the ruin beautiful.
A row of pelicans waits to dive
beneath the surface.
Watch them, she tells me,
this is what we all do:
go low, deep, deeper,
and someday not return.
Kite Experiment in D Minor
How did my body become electric?
When did I become a house key tangled in the apple tree
of some English gentleman’s Manor? Why the gravitational pull
away from the kite of expectation?
I am older now, I have watched my mother die.
She who ruled the disco in a Qiana dress,
theatrical and conductive, beautiful they all said.
I finally forgave her
the small cruelties of my youth
when I walked through the museum of her childhood:
hiding under the front porch
knees in packed mud, while overhead
the thundercloud she called father Zeused his rods.
I learned to roar from her. Now my ears
hear even the lowest fidelity, I don’t mind the scratch
and hum on each drum. The beat is the song
I croon, grounded and alone,
nobody’s lightning rod, nobody’s drone.
if the clock is never wound
and how is it we were dying
when all we felt was alive?
how is it there were never
enough nails for the crucifixion?
we had to let the bastard go
had to phone your mom and
ask for a loan, and
all she did was laugh
freedom, right?
the desert where it ran up
hard against the ocean
the ocean as it
filled with corpses
and you told me there was
nothing left for us but
the future
and all i could do
was love you
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