After Long Live Love or Charming Countryside, Max Ernst, 1923
We can hear the resounding clap of waves,
gentle enough that they might be
your mother's robin's-egg hung-to-dry sheets
whipping in the wind, held fast to the clothesline
by pins that were given to her by her own long-dead mother.
The blue in the tips of your fingers
makes me wonder how long you have been here
Where we writhe, each wholly absorbed
in some gesturing Other, welcoming
the touch that in any other moment would be intrusion
We can smell the far-off acrid scent
of oil, pervasive enough that it might be
my father's work clothes when he arrives home
eyes drooping, mouth trapped in that horrible unmoving line
Flattened once again by the rig
You tell me that the red of his crooked nose
matches the ribbon I wear
I tell you that your blue fingertips
match your mother's sheets
A tremor takes its place in perpetuity, bursting
deep in our bones — is this how parents feel?
We know how children feel
When they must watch as their mother
begins to give away the items most precious
to her in the world and as the wrinkles
gouged in their father’s face shoot deeper
every time they visit
The house sold
The cat given away
The old Ford silent in the garage
instead of grumbling its way up the overpass.
