Inheritance
A plane crashed into
my grandmother’s yard, so
she married the pilot.
By forty, she was
blind and had kidneys that
could not handle her blood.
The teenaged son she
could never relate to
flew to her on weekends.
Her husband’s vessel became
trains; he traded air for earth, but
still held the sea in his glass.
My grandmother died young and
alone. People say I’m like her, but
who
knows if they mean clever or doomed.
Photographs, poetry she typed while
sightless, a story in the news.
She is all paper now.
Eavesdropping After Dark
Making
the perilous walk to the beach at night
had
only been an idle curiosity,
until
you made me promise not to.
Not
yet self-effacing or belligerent enough
to
give in all the way to temptation,
I
leave after you have fallen asleep
and
walk just past the place where
the
aureole of porch light ends.
I am
hoping, at least, to hear the ocean.
After
seconds of silence, I begin to make out
ship
horns, water birds, and the endless whispers
exchanged
between the waves and the stones,
which
has a rhythm not unlike the decades-long
conversation
between the air and your lungs,
which
I catch a few sentences of when I am
back
inside, sitting at the kitchen table,
and
you are still not yet awake.
