Poetry

Half her leg disappears
             in the mud. The children

wobble her home. One foot 
                   shoeless. Her clog lost

Under the oppressive July heat, I carry
my aching body, sweat-coated and glistening, 
up the staircase spiraling and spiraling skyward
until I arrive. Within, a sightless darkness—

The city could be choked with wreckage, 
and still the children would clear
a patch for a football field.

When he wrote, “I like for you to be still,” 
did he imagine that house, its coconut trees
looming against the sun-soaked sky, their kurumbatti 
scattered like fists on the grass in the yard where 
 

There is no hope
but there are nights, and trees, 
and narrow streets.
There are two people whispering 
while everyone else sleeps.
There are shadows, odd flowers,

It’s 7 a.m. The bugle sprays and sounds like hot sunlight.
I roll off my straw mattress. A wave of grass bursts through

Look over there.
The sea has not yet appeared
though we’ve been driving for two hours, 
though its hot and humid air closes in on us, 
though our clothes cling to our skin.

Her wool sweater is the color of a frozen lake.
I’ve seen it before. Her wearing it, shelving
books about volcanoes at the Seattle Public Library.

We run

past the floodlights                block after block 
past barrack Q-55-C
past Tooru picking weeds.                     barefoot

The only lock of hair I have ever mourned
is a silky strand—a baby’s purest blond,
saved from the first cut of a daughter’s hair
& preserved with a photo under glass.