I don’t know whose recollections are suspect:

after leaving Maui, Mother learned to swim.

(She loved tidal pools more than anything.)

•

In my kitchen, logs blink in the fire—

through blinds, the wind blusters and

browbeaten trees creak in the orchard.

The rain pours then stops for sun. If

he lost Mother’s ashes what more could I stand?

•

Omusubi tastes best on black beaches.

Because Mother never learned to swim,

she watched her five brothers from a blanket.

On the intransigent subway, I can’t recall if I’ve passed

my station. Metal smells of being fertile again.

(His mother said her social station—)

•

Mother showed our little girl how to sift flour

and how to crank an egg beater.

After Father lost her,

he barred us from his rooms and from his yard

where at night, long red worms

slithered up from the ground.

•

Mother’s ashes know: before the puppy snarfles,

Father shoves snow off the supine roof;

for bonsai, use pliers the size of a nail clipper;

in the vineyard, the strongest canes;

in a cold snap, a hair dryer on frozen pipes;

fireflies winked for mates or prey outside

while I tucked away my baby’s pink layette.

Mother’s ashes know their box is in the living room

where she didn’t cha-cha anymore.

Where has winter stripped everything to the nest?

In my kitchen, the logs blink in the fire and I know

omusubi tastes best on a back shore. I know, too,

she doggedly showed granddaughters how to graft flowers.

•••

charms ii.

Sympathy

When you spy a horseshoe crab

Flipped over on the shore

Right it gently in the tide

And with your kin—a true rapport

•••

Sparkly Things

Ephemera, mouse droppings,

pillows torn to feathers:

Father stays to nest

while the magpie knows in its bones

a hollow for flight

and a collarbone fused for stability.

Her collarbone had shown off

pearls, lapis lazuli, the coral from Tibet.

The strands are buried here,

my mother, long gone. Here, too,

I flew down the stairs when I was a child.

He slipped a few steps

covered in ice and leaves. He hit his head.

He is not a bird.

•

Its collarbone was confused

with the one for wishes. I wish

he had not lost Mother

•

to that house where the calico

ate one of her own.

Do magpies commit such things?

Yes, and flip over dung

in search of beetles conjugating there,

a secret hoard kept in a cupboard. Funny—

now we know these crow-cousins

actually fear

sparkly things.

•

My two cousins flew to Mother’s funeral,

fogged with incense—

not as august as a magpie who discovers its dead

and summons the others to raucously convene

before flying off, done with their patter.

Also not like a magpie,

he doesn’t recognize himself in a mirror.

•••

The Cryptic Chamber

For authorities whose hopes

are shaped by mercenaries?

MARIANNE MOORE

The nautilus, altering little from its Cambrian form,

jubilantly paddles about