Once, When I was Your Mother
The love lines of your hand
as it slipped into mine,
your sensibility, passed to me like a folded fifty,
brought us both luck.
The wheel watched trees die and moons wax
your assurances were ready
should the stars shock space into a question mark.
A load of timber falling off a semi
A bird strike in the engine of an airplane
A syringe of air plunged into a vein
We met your family at Shoney’s afterwards
and decided to honeymoon in Pittsburgh.
Now every day I listen to your chest and wipe your face,
my hands never warm from the Convent lace around us
or the hanging dinner plates and Christmas balls
that I watch, a quarter mile down the road when
I arrive, soon to be with you.