generations
my mother used to sleep on her kitchen floor
when I would come to visit. she
insisted. somehow, I can inhabit my son’s room
when company calls. somehow.
my mother used to sleep on her kitchen floor
when I would come to visit. she
insisted. somehow, I can inhabit my son’s room
when company calls. somehow.
cleaning the house: vinegar, rags and incense
to honor my visiting aunt. cheese,
and milk for coffee, a new soft chair, a pillow.
the rain stops. well-pleased nose.
let the critics have their barbecue.
my father’s out-of-tune, glad-hearted singing;
the inelegant poem my friend sends in the mail:
these are my rice and beans.
scratched into the inner groove: “the sandhill
cranes.” the band name, lost to 20
years of not owning vinyl. just the memory
of the shiny black smooth vinyl,
glinting with whatever light was there,
those three words scratched by hand into
the die that pressed some number of those records,
holding the disc with fingers
outstretched, with the two palms. that moment flashes
into the mind from time to time,
as if i was just returning home from the market
and realized i’d forgotten to buy
milk for my son, which is what i went there for
in the first place, but without that sense
of purpose. just the urgency. a flight
without direction. why?
and who has met a newt, near midnight, dancing
beneath ones toes, while watching orion
dance with the moon and plotting tomorrow’s dances?
give up? the only answer.