BORROWED WAVE
(In childhood, shuffling between a caught space)
Your Nana was ironing, starching the sheets
in her Lemon Joy Kitchen
Wings without body, white sheet snagged on the lip
of her board. Was she a bird?
'I can smell the rubbers in the front entry as I sat on the hall-tree seat
and hunted for my galoshes,' she wrote, remembering
how one object from childhood locates--
You were drinking milk from her blue Delft teacup
By slice of window you kept lifting up her teacup and leaving
a rim on blue flowers. Little moths or butterflies,
waves parting
'A sudden brightness of the white tablecloth on the big round table
in the dining room.'
tea + cup (deft granddaughter makes the thing in her mind)
but the wave of nostalgia is borrowed. You remember sleeping
beneath a moss green scroll whose scholarly characters continued,
three bent backs on a footbridge in the Taoist garden
'Click of the rug guards on the stairs as I tip-toe down'
And something caught in the rim of your throat because her shadow
stretched and retracted. Sprinklers sprayed by the firefly cemetery
and her pointed brown pumps set themselves down
Cracks intersecting--
(Also, about memory placed spatially, as if a screen)
Lost in the scroll, like vision, is her breath beneath a rose-colored
comforter when you peek in the bedroom. Her narrow bed
with polished cherry headboard. But mostly, that Nana breathes
with her shut eyes, body still, contracted
'and the shine on Mother's circular china closet'
One night, the motorcyclist hits their meridian. After a terrible
screech, neighbors pile on the sidewalk. You remember
the blast of after-rain steam against your nightgown,
which inside the condominium, beneath a moss scroll,
has been very cool in the hum
Someone pounds their front door and wakes
you--
In the morning, his boot sits lip
up beneath her Oldsmobile
She opens the car door slowly as
if connecting dots
Triangle :
Boot: Body
The color of the boot is washed ochre
--a monkey cup plant awaiting dinner--
Pollination trapped inside a throat
Back there, you bent over the plant
The tongue of his boot arches here
Over carport
(Ideas about scaffolding and foreground)
The window bars straight down, their iron parallel
You were visiting America, where the guest room
window attached to your dream
Someone seared the bars and reached--
Your head was by wall and your feet by window. Outside, a steel mobile
glinted even at night in the carport. Cars made streaks against the walls,
carrying themselves on green where three bent backs were crossing
the footbridge. Three panes of fabric from a dark wooden rod
In art, another country continued inside
time, people stopped on a planked bridge with swallows
Dusk losing edges
She keeps coming in to speak you to sleep. Sleep tight. Sleep tight. Repeat
three times for each bar on the window
The scholars go on playing cards
Over there, remembering bamboo bent
around the buildings
Sleep, tight
(Opening the door, a little wildness in the lip of her galoshes)