There wasn’t much on the island to speak of,
a red dirt road through canefields going nowhere.
Your father’s life waiting for you.
In the evenings after work,
he polished his shoes.
She wasn’t the girl in the polka-dot dress
you took for a spin.
What wasn’t red dirt and canefields
was off-limits: her thin shoulders,
the lights from the pink hotel
distant as the surrounding reef
silently lit with shells.
Thirty years is a long time going back
for me, unborn, a quiet witness
to the pressed kiss she saved in a basement room.
Driving home,
you stalled under the stars.
The sea meant nothing to you.
It was instead the sky, an uncut road
through a field of blue.
Your father asked gently
how the time was spent.
You offered clean hands,
a pantomime of wings above the tablecloth.
The recital of nights
you taught yourself to fly
in an abandoned field.
He lifted his eyes
and then lowered them in grace.
He remained that way unconvinced
by the girl who would come to call him father,
by your maiden flight across the dreary plates.
You speak in lengths of decades,
polishing your shoes,
as if only yesterday you carried
a young bride up the steps of the family porch.
She remembers it differently.
Red dirt and clouds
and a red dog limping toward her.
She waved but you were already down the road,
spinning a reckless veil of dust.
It was four o’clock in the trees.
A river of heat shimmered through the canestalks.
I am a part of that mixed blessing:
a pinch of salt
thrown over a weary shoulder.
If you had looked in the rear view mirror,
you might have seen it: the white gloved hand
like a white flag waving.
The day she turned slowly toward the house,
you returned in a borrowed plane,
swooping low three times in a rush of air.
The laundry fluttered.
The chickens squawked for shelter.
She carried a black suitcase up the stairs,
unlatching the door with the word father,
a man who sat far back in his chair.
She unpinned her hat, peeled off her gloves,
splitting apart the white petals.
They lay on her lap like gardenias,
twin flowers,
one for each daughter she would give you.
One patient, the other pliant:
beside the window and the field,
a self already divided.
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