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Havana Moon
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The steam of a Houston morning in June,
heat from the stove, and the musty-sweet
odor of Josie.
Mother was in Cuba playing bridge;
she left a slip draped on the chair in her
bedroom;
it was black, and mirrored night wings and
silken feelings;
and kept me close in perplexity and anguish.
But Josie almost was my mother, had held
me in tears,
had washed off the gumbo mud revealing my
whiteness.
Had smoothed over my harsh fantasies as if
she had read the code,
knew what I was about, even before I was
born.
The bacon sizzled. She broke the eggs,
light caught them spilling into the white
bowl.
Her bosom shook as she beat them. The fork
clicked on the glass.
The moment sank into a place beneath the
earth with quilts around me.
Light hit the back of her neck and her hair
glistened like tinsel.
I stared at my mother's ghost, her hand holding
out thirteen cards
like a tray of something precious, to be
envied, and I envied them.
Already a cicada called.
The shimmering day hung there beneath the
sun.
Josie poured eggs onto my plate.
When will the time break, and fall into pieces
so that I can move again?
I watched the palms of her hands almost white,
opening like flowers.
The kitchen, hot and wet and clean as a leaf,
open to the heat, screen door slapping, fly
swatter on the table,
Josie's feet stuffed into open toed shoes,
her red toenails.
Flies drifted on the sunlight.
The Havana moon circled the room and I heard
the music
and saw mother there in her glory, living
her brilliant story.
Though there was silence, it was electric
silence;
buzzing inside the dreaminess,
and as I held a fork full of eggs, suspended,
something turned in my center, an electric
beauty was lit
and floated before me.
But it was only the sun on the knuckle of
my right forefinger.
Josie's heavy footfall,
her breath that I could have seen through
a fog, sparkling.
She filled the kitchen like liquid filling
a glass.
My questions collect like inaccessible spiders.
The floor creaked with her weight.
But she never seemed so large to me;
rather like the sky, or like a dream is large.
Red toenails. Black-tinsel hair.
The delicate movement of her arms, moving
hips.
This is woman, telling of mysteries I have
bitten in my sleep,
and twisted around like a young vine
seeking mastery over touching.
There is a citadel of passion captured by
her presence,
and no confusion in her spirit.
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