While I Am Away

While I am away, and you turn inside
the sheets to stretch and yawn, try
to remember other mornings. Waking up
to French roast and toast under the thin
white veil of summer light. Shift opened
at a crossed leg. Talking
news. Birds a flurry of wings
at the feeder. A span
of sand. Wind wild
hair. The sprite of kites
climbing cloud flowered skies.

And since I must remind you
not to let our flush of sweet
peas die for water, leaves
turn downward, tumble
from the stems, I will
remind you of what I will
bring back to you. A bauble
of crystal to spin new light. My fingers
making something new
from everything that was. There will be
plenty of time for this.
               
So when you turn inside the night
covers, reach for my hand, its ghost
cupped at your shoulder. Never mind
those long cold shadows
of regret. Inside us there is
room enough for stars
to sprawl a flawless slate
of sky. So that you will not forget
me, come here now. I want
to whisper in your ear. Lie still,
my kiss is at your neck.

War Babies

This is it. The place where they met. 1945. America
is warming up with Quaker Oats and toast. Iwo Jima
is falling. The boys are coming back from over there
in blues and greens, silver and gold burnishing chests.
I see my mother there. She sits on the sideline.

She studies shorthand to move up from the punch line
to book work, since one girl fell to steel an overhead crane
let loose. It is good money, steady work, a small outfit
of immigrants gone big. They get the orders out, turn
feed and cattle cars into munition and artillery hauls.

My father plays ball. He's one of them, waiting out orders
to rivet or weld as girls giggle and watch between lumber
yard stacks and lunch whistles. He swings a bat. The ball
strikes her breast. He lifts her from her knees. It is love
at first sight. An a-bomb explodes silence across the Southwest.

It is cold out here in this sibylline light. The new owners
run a forging plant. The rail yard is frozen along her old Ohio.
Rusted sheet metal ramparts curl out where I peek inside
a time before I was. Truman sends over B-29s. The sun
seems to crawl closer to the earth. Everyone falls in love.
                   
I am about to be conceived. I will fight against the birth
walls. They will take me from my mother's Twilight Sleep.
Other women will rock away my cries, her milk gone
to her head and soured. She'll stay on the job for someone
who will not come back. It will take me years to know her.