Boom
She woke a tiny girl in a
large apartment
marooned on a canopy bed
high in the sky
Walls of glass – far above
this new concrete
city -silently scurrying
far far below -her bed
piled high with pillows –
a cover to be called
a duvet – as though it made all the difference.
Her mother took her swing, made a good deal,
accepted as a sign from a
divine Universe the
tall man who kept coming
back to Do-Drop-In
diner and finally after
thousand cups of coffee
and steamy side-wise
smiles took them away
to here –Her mother now
wore shoes with high
heels and bright red
lipstick – lifted a little finger
when she sipped wine –
from a closet filled with
fancy glasses – all the same – all sorts of repeat
things like that here – fat stuffed animals choked
with neck bows glassy-eyed
on the window seat
like one of those infinity
mirrors things repeating –
on and on in this endless
apartment -a pinned up
butterfly behind glass walls –she lay marooned on
this canopy bed high in
the sky and -it was wrong
selfish wrong -she knew it-but she could not deny
that she ached for the small stream at the end of
the dirt road behind the
school where she used to
stop on the way home - looking for tadpoles and
the
glint of copper pennies -she knew it was wrong
to look for a line that would draw them back – back
to wish each thing to vanish into a vacuum of never-
had-happened – for time to fly
back to the then-when
she walked on ground - bare feet in the soft warm dirt
of home – hope a thing that was only an
ache in her
mother’s eye.