I was sweating Rivers. In photographs her smiles are forced. Today she said. In the heavy odors of fish frying, men whirling in smoke, Ma holding on to a glass With both hands, in no one's hands now in a room in a glare in the windows. I wish I were a better son.
Today is better than yesterday.
The wind has shifted, the fog Has retreated to Little Bird Mountain. It is Wednesday, quiet and warm. Ellen Is asleep, curled under the covers, her hands open at her sides. One white star hangs back in the window above the house on the hill lit With two lights, the early light spilling in over her, her legs spread out across The blue sheets like a pale sky holding not even a single plane or bird, only the white star Which is her, of course, as corny as it sounds, as the kids rubbed their eyes and hair, While I stood there in the kitchen with a coffee cup, a dream of love, desperate to hold it, While the huge green moth with orange antennae clung perfectly still to the window sill Of the window to the lake, of what we have been looking for all year. We brought Some kind of crazy desire here to see what had become muted between us, a longing For tenderness, for each other's touch.