Family Dinner
Kindness skirts the absolve, tender
love curtained, the way nice is handled
purpled in tones I could not remember
one day in the life of being so small
except windows, you look out empty
What is so real as the absence of sound?
the way I was gathered was wilder
taught we hold tongue tight
but affection is fluid, he says don't be
scared: Terror is a necessary fluid.
Only things temporary are precious.
where others built brick by brick, I found
my hands full of sand, grain by grain, each
numbered, look miracles, come in the way
you receive them. The back porch held us
in the summer, while New Orleans disappeared
we carved out too much dreaming and built this too
what we needed: And to be fed by love at every meal
what a life that would be: The blood jet is poetry.
Love is this desert: hot, dry, and endless.
