half-naked like puppies on a rug, bathed

in the blue TV light, trying to be good.

We watched them from the corners of our eyes

as they swayed through the house on huge

fearless legs, or sat down slowly

with some large idea and a book.

I could not imagine the immense thoughts

they carried in their heads, their hearts

pumping like heavy machinery.

And maybe this was how it had to be, their silence

a rigid religion, a state of eternal grace

we could never know.

And of the animals I tended through those years,

skinny white mice and shivering birds, dogs

with their browbeaten eyes, the cat

who stared back at me with the glazed green irises

of an idiot savant. What did I know

of their terrors, their souls? Like the child I was,

I simply gave them names and fed them.

Day after day, I watched them grow.

Family Reunion

Camera in hand, I call out to them,

one by one, in twos and threes,

working up to the group shots,

the family portrait.

My nephews, scrubbed clean, dressed

in red, hug each other’s mirror image

and smile the same smile.

Head to head, their dark hair mingles

as the shutter clicks.

Now I sit the baby between them,

my niece who has my eyes, my nose,

a stranger’s wide mouth.

The flash going off in her face

makes her love the small black box

I hold, so much, she is willing to pose

forever, as if I held the force

of the sun, a gorgeous toy, and all

her days balanced in my hands.

Grandmother squeezes in, holds

her baby’s babies in her diminishing lap,

circles the shoulders of her son,

her daughters, my own shy daughter,

and pulls them into the frame,

the fine lines of noses and chins

a painter’s signature stroke.

I take picture after picture,

the windows going darker

with each bright flash, each face

held up to the repetition of light.

But when I look to see how many frames

are left, I find the tiny window

in the camera is empty, remember

the film left on my dresser

500 miles away. I smile at my family,

ask them to stay where they are

just a few minutes longer as I press

the blank shutter again

and again, burning their images into my own

incorruptible lens, picture

after perfect picture, saving them all

with my naked eye, my bare hands,

the purest light of my love.

Each Sound

Beginnings are brutal, like this accident

of stars colliding, mute explosions

of colorful gases, the mist and dust

that would become our bodies

hurling through black holes, rising,

muck ridden, from pits of tar and clay.

Back then it was easy to have teeth,

claw our way into the trees — it was

accepted, the monkeys loved us, sat

on their red asses clapping and laughing.

We’ve forgotten the luxury of dumbness,