Friday, March 16, 2012

What You See


My mother, blonde and bent,

cleans the garage, not even a year

after your death. She pulls on the miles

of dive equipment, cracked and black

hoses baked from deadpan heat.

Reminiscent of the years

they had lived underwater,

now piles of oxygen-starved heaps:

Oceans to be buried by earth.


She continues late past summer,

counts three falling stars before bed,

dreams in metal, as wind chimes

sing out low from the east.

The sunrise will be sure to come,

stretch her body

across the half empty house.


Hours pass, hard as quartz,

pushing holes in the sky, and then,

she finds his dive slate, writing still legible;

it says, what you see are fish eggs.

Little sacs of life, the size of hope,

living inside their universe,

legs--all in oceanic unison, and

ghost-like as they emerge,

rising and falling

into each other's arms

deep inside the salt of the earth.


No comments: