SIREN

 

When I bend to tie your dirt-flecked show

I’m reminded of the smell of toasting

potatoes on a summer evening’s campfire coals.

Your flesh is smooth and cool,

tender as fresh sweet corn,

this barbecue memory of our last June

when you showed me through the

rippling silver lake shallows how

swarms of minnows chased your

prancing ankles, nibbling your

toes, causing you to splash

slaughter up towards the

Coppertone sky.

 

Now your feet, despite

everything, growing always another

size larger, put pressure

on my thigh, as if you would shove me

backwards, remove me from the earth.

We both so despise what

we are about to go do, the waiting and the

waiting and the waiting more

in too-warm winter office rooms of

more waiting with picture books trampled

by people waiting too, waiting to

surprise!

Your implacable rage a relief against the

non-looks of other mothers

sighing over wisp-fuzzed foreheads

lap-tucked tightly in buttoned sweater knit

by grandma with love,

the tag says so.

 

These people are so like us, so unlike us

ahead of, not instead of

us, we wish them away, in our way, we wish them

gone, well, not unlike

ourselves, we wish this for us, we wish

ourselves elsewhere, back to the lake of

charred steak smells and rubber beach balls,

coconut lotion, protection from the sun,

the too much of the sun, the rays, the

poisoned blistered peeling…

Oh.

Is that why?

Your foot shark-swings in furious arcs,

the scuff marks on your heel add

lines to my face.

 

I was right there for your scrapes with danger.

I heard no siren.

Now you scream for us both