My son sits in the same classroom
I once sat in, where the instructional
wall clock appears rigged by noon
as if time can’t be spent fast enough,
the dull eyelid after lunch and the last
recess bell scuffed by the dry wind gathering
bits of rubbish
into the African tulip and poinciana
trees like confetti
rising from the cracked leather
glove of the baseball field.
My son is covering the same bases,
shouting into the same air
as I pass, honk and wave on my way
home from the market, climbing
the hill where my mother lived in her brother’s house
the last year before her marriage.
The old lawns carry the eye
toward the sea where, gold-tipped
in the sunset, oceanliners
appeared as happiness,
cursive on the horizon, a foreign
cargo of violins and champagne, lily-throated and idle.
They lent their names to these streets:
Lurline, Matsonia, Mariposa.
Saturday nights, money in his pocket
stuffed like feathers in a mattress,
my father climbed this hill, driving
his father’s blue Ford, shiny as new shoes.
The long and dusty drive in from the country.
The turns I take he anticipated,
counting each hairpin
turn to reach my mother-
my mother waiting, a butterfly
pinned to her yellow dress – his heart
racing, taking each curve slow.
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