I’ve seen exactly one photo
Of each or my parents
In the full blossom of youth.  

My mother, posed and pristine,
Dark hair as straight as broom straw,
Falling down her shoulders
And cascading down her back
Like an auburn waterfall.  

She’s smiling.  

When I was a child
And first saw Cher
She reminded me of mom.  

My father, caught candid,
Shirtless and shoeless in jeans
And a cowboy hat,
Scampering across a log
Spanning a small ditch
In some woods somewhere.  

Lynyrd Skynyrd reminded me of him.   

Both photos are years before
The exuberant youths would meet,
Each already deep into the bullshit of life,
Even longer before I appear
To patch the cracks
Snaking through the foundation—

Maybe I was the foundation.  

But there had to be more between
The smiling girl with her waterfall hair
And the shoeless boy
Holding his hat as he tries
To keep his balance.  

A Joke, a look, something unspoken
Or unspeakable
Between two people
That springs the trap
And lashes them together
Until, eventually, 
They chew off their own feet to escape.