As Mourning Doves Persist

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter   cookies nested    in paper that  releases a sigh   But instead there may be fiction   within   wishes never reciprocated   Playbill of redundant arguments   One black glove    found fraying   This vessel on an emptied  table   solo     temptation is labeled with  another’s name   Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow     A tool unsuited  to the task of   prying open  Not yet valentine

Solstice, 2019, for Tracy 1. And cross borders we do often without leaving our houses. Our bodies dream of gardens. Our hands flutter as feeling exits as we press hard against the solid entry door.  I type the names of cities. My search reveals rivers,  airfares, temperatures  in July. 2.  Seeking sleep, I am transported through music piped into  tiny earbuds. While on an island my father has two seizures  in the night. His ten children fly to one another with cautionary fright, typing. Time zones vary from each cell phone exclamation. Two sisters, you and I, raise questions that barely touch down  for others  but I witness you. 3. By morning we’re assured was merely fainting, and I reconsider change of plans. No emergency to rush to his quiet side. I walk no farther instead to this table for eggs, an English muffin. Arrive inside my individual conclusions. Concern that happiness, once again, is quickly stymied.

Where will you appear, my mother? As your mother found her way   silver                   into a ghost silhouette    after her death   behind you in the wintry trees I think perhaps I’ll recognize you not as turquoise as expected but pooling olive as a Southwestern hill     slip cover Not Fremont Ellis landscape with rain but mobile by Calder gentle   kinetic   Texas wind vane A hard working literary history   yours  tied in bundles like Emily’s letters to an anonymous lover

Grandmothers’ recipes. Memories of grandfathers who gardened. Our daughter’s baby book which I always promised I’d retrieve first in case of fire or earthquake. I’d like to say I would remember to bundle the two-inch thumb drives that contain  everything we’ve written in recent years, but maybe it would be better to make it out with only our fresh imaginations in tact.   Pack all the photographs instead. That beloved baby book so full that it is tied and retied with mended bands. I will insert between the pages, one love letter each from the forgiven and sensuous men, and the reliable women too.  Exercises in cursive pen and epistles of regret. I will bundle up the scent of purple wisteria encroaching on the second floor window of a former San Francisco Sunset kitchen.  The first hour in which my husband walked into the bookstore where I was working. His blue eyes and his wounded silence questioning everything.  My  mother and my father, even as they carry their own remo

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter cookies, paper that releases a sigh. But instead there may be fiction, wishes never reciprocated. Playbill of redundant arguments. One black glove, unlost, fraying. What vestibule on an emptied table, solo temptation labeled with another’s name. Guarded. Eventually recycled. Initials carved in melting snow. A tool unsuited to the task of prying open. Without valentine.

There is a certain stretch of highway where my brother was thrown.          Skidded on skin. His broken neck mended                    with chrome halo and screws. Farther north, a second brother did succumb. Falling to curve          at the fence line. Scent of whiskey in his speed.                    What he finally could not forgive, having changed his first name to Blue. His last to Freedom. Leaving behind          two daughters to mourn and an ex-wife who claimed him                    as the love of her life. Third brother hangs an army jacket on a simple cross             as marker in the field of swallowed sorrow.                                           Camouflage decanso .                                     My eye sees as far as it can see, and then, is startled.                 Loosened nuts and bolts and shattered corners of press board                      dislodge from the back of trucks in front of me. Fragments flail in