Protozoa

 

When we spoke on the phone there were

dominant background sounds, crickets here that 

 

rhymed with the smoke alarm that went off in your

living room and you couldn’t remember 

 

the code to shut it down and last night a moment

of rain and I lay in bed unsure if I should go outside

 

to set the orange bucket aside from the downpour

to maintain the safe house there for the unidentified

 

protozoa, my husband called them, naiant
in the unlikely habitat  - what I believe tadpoles

 

beside a yard where I have never seen frogs but

perhaps it is the sludge cry that I seek

 

the sticky tar paper that lines my lungs and heart cavity
weeping impending displacements, my father

 

who may never button up his favorite green shirt again 

with philodendron etched on fabric nor walk 

 

out to the lanai at the back of his house with his third wife 
and we either joke or pretend we will take him

 

to the beach when we arrive and that we must
bring him a panorama, one gulp of

 

a photograph of his ten children as sacred as
fine sand in the cup of his unsteady hands 

 

The ringing in our ears long distance makes us laugh 

as we otherwise have no control and the swimmers swim.