The Year Of This Snapshot

AT TWELVE

Lit by

lemons and a bright blade

the kitchen table waits in the fragrance

of mint leaves boiling in sugar water

for the making of lemonade.

Lit by

our mother's laugh in a darkening

room with murmuring friends, the bare

wood floors cool our bare

feet, the radio cries

monophonic

and low; I do not know

why our room is too small for us both

or what I await; the evening goes

on, it is never over.

AT FORTYFIVE

Departure

A woman who began to look

a bit like I look now

left you to me:

parents, children, job,

friends, pets and all

before she went away.

Remember her at play

on the oak plank floor

when the children were small?

She toppled like a tree.

Just in from work,

"I'm so tired," she sighed.

One asked, "How tired

are you, Mom?" And she

made her downward slide

real: the youngest cried.

Then they heaved and hauled

her upright again,

laughing; and that became

a regular family game.

ii.

First she was winning the tussle, then I. We switched

more than once, winner to loser, each above

then below. Then balance was struck: tensed muscles

barely twitched. Countered in still equipoise

and running with each other's sweat in silence we lay

like finely matched lovers. Violence so reciprocal

and so complete petrified motion: none

but I perceived when she slumped to rest.

No one hauled her to her feet. (It was this real)

None of them watched as she got up to leave.

Continue The Year of This Snapshot