the hundreds of babies in tents.

I find the stories are the faithful ones.

•

After Grandma lost her riddled lung,

the raccoon ransacked emergency

boxes of powdered milk in the pantry.

Cold cases of Squirt remained safe.

And the word, safety? Think rubbers. Think patrol.

Think Glock. Then think accidental discharge.

•

I found that in the Isua supracrustal belt,

flora was frozen for billions of years,

secure until discovery. Throughout his home

Father entrusted his critical papers

to those catacombs of no recollection.

•••

Hatchlings

Though tough to experiment

on a crocodile in the wild,

laboratory research has yielded

that prior to hatching,

a little one begins to coo.

Why?

To signal to the mama,

start digging?

To cue siblings to coo

for a synchronous emergence?

Or to practice wheedling

for pastime or coddle? Or

perhaps to rehearse the menace

that even a crocodile must acquire?

Maybe, though, cooing is fun. How

to research what transpires

in the head of a hatchling

before it’s hatched—

and why we need to know—

might well be an intimacy

not meant to be trespassed.

•••

The Ashes

The puppy snarfles to be let out

and I wake to radiator gurgling

then feet crunching the reticent snow.

Before I was born, Mother sewed her own suits.

What do her ashes know?

•

Father shoved snow off the supine roof.

Mother crafted Christmas ornaments:

glue and glitter and red balls.

No tinsel, no angels.

Her death started in the living room.

•

For bonsai, pliers the size of a nail clipper,

spools of wire, and a fist-sized rock.

One bore a petite pomegranate,

never to eat, not to touch.

Her death began with a baseball bat.

•

In the vineyard, he secured the strongest cane

from training stake to fruiting wire.

Pruning with handsaw and lopper.

He’d leave a spur for the next season.

He shoved her away with direct objects.

•

In a cold snap if one pipe freezes,

the rest may freeze as well.

Even before the puppy stirs.

Even before a baby sister arrived

in Mother’s arms in the misleading car.

•

After the war, after she met Father,

she smoked menthols but didn’t cha-cha anymore.

She’d light up and blow smoke

out the apoplectic window.

He found the ashes on the sill.

•

Fireflies winked for mates or prey

outside the savvy window of my own first home

where I sewed a dress too smart to wear.

On the stereo, a bluesman cried,

I need my ashes hauled!

•

I tucked away our baby’s pink layette

in circumspect mothballs

for a christening that never took place.

As well, a doll that Auntie crocheted.

More than anything, I love tidal pools.

•

I know her ashes are at Father’s,

lost in his charnel of junk mail.

He claims that thieves have stolen the box,

his knob cutter and root hook.

He says, ashes aren’t remains anyways.

•

Winter stripped everything to limb

and dejected nest. No angels, no crèche.