crabbing
in years to yet become they
would remember that day -
the girl cousins sat beading
in a small circle on the swept
wooden porch beside the empty
rocking chairs stringing from
a pile between them – picking
a few colored bits of glass at a time
the uncles, off to the far end,
sat and stood on, and against, the railing
with a little chew -munching silently,
with flat faces -even the youngest uncle
who just last night before it all, was finally
called out as he palmed a cheat card in the
dining room and would not leave the game
until they folded the table and the chairs and
walked off refusing to speak about it again
the aunts were thought to be in the wide
white channel of the kitchen, a few at the sink
washing fruit, others at the counter cutting
what would be bright salad served “later.”
But they weren’t –
They had untied their aprons and through
wavy glass watched their mother’s apple
blossom tree where their only son, a small
bright boy of nearly eight scrabbled himself
like a land-locked crab up into a bower of
white petals and picked a lapful of small
perfect green apples - just as a sigh ran from
Mother’s bedroom above and down the steps
on light slippered feet just ahead of the beastly
thing lumbering behind her, as one, they heard
that lyric laugh of their childhood, and knew
without need of trudging up the stairs to stare with
reddened eyes at her husk, that she had outrun the
pinchers of the bulging eyed Cancer crab –
a wafted wisp of her lilac scent lingering
about them all in a forever embrace as
the kitchen screen door slammed gently,
lovingly, firmly closed behind her irrevocable
release into the soft summer wind
~
