OUR FRIENDS AND family come for a party. Children hunt eggs in damp grass and shrubs. Light a fire in the yard. Drink beer. "Easter is here," K says, opening another colored plastic egg. Later, alone, washing dishes, black night out, I drink wine in the quiet meditation of routine. Cats cry, so I spread food in a bowl under a rose bush, leaves and air still wet with the drip. One white ghost cat trips up torn and battered. Charlie, a sleek charcoal lynx-like creature, makes room, sharing his protein. Inside, lights burn bright warmth into the black substance of heavy night. Yellow freesias stand upright from a vase in the living room. Hoa picks up the room. Both boys down—K exhausted with the vivid displays of the day—Waylon drifting according to the rhythms of his otherness. And finish the day here, beside him and his mother. Talk about the weather or whatever, our children and friends. Zone out in the numbing blue narcotic of television. You figure such a life could never come to completion. Imagine seeing this day from divers perspectives of past and future. To be so bound within a greater disintegration, threads unwinding even as our domestic rituals increase pace to keep up with genetic need. To seek an image, tracing the motions of this earth-bound babe. To follow his image, his breathing, his body—okay. Let's fashionably zip up the poetry. The significant ending is plain. Inner relations move by outward symbol. It's Easter Sunday and all.
Posted by Dale at July 4, 2004 10:11 PM