1. Infant

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I don’t remember the first time I lost my mother.

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I can only imagine:            infant wheeled

       through airports         infant crying

in grandmother’s lap          infant diaper change

       in economy class bathroom.

Birthed from Latin       infant

means not speaking      unable to speak.

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In other words             I cannot ask her

what it was like:           each separation            a loss.

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In other words             the past is a kind          of infancy.

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After returning            I’d sit in mother’s lap

staring at photos of myself

who could not speak:   infant in blue

                    stroller               infant in yellow

                    sweater              infant in blood-red

                    coat.

Now grown  I scan photos of my mother

from when she was younger than me.

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Is death a kind of infancy?

The dead cannot speak either.  

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In dreams we babble        a nonsense language

infants together        cradled by stars.

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2. Kid

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In the first dream        I’m a little kid

          on my first        yellow school bus.

A man with a greasy ponytail snatches

          my mother from the sidewalk            pushes her

into a dirty blue car. He looks like a shadow

          of Disney’s Gaston.    I watch them disappear

from the bus window            wake from naptime

          gasp-sobbing             so I can't speak.          

My animal panic             scares my bullies

into patting my shoulders with kid gloves.

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Kid was once a crude word for children

sold into labor in British colonies—children

bought and worked like livestock—little goats

born to be seized and consumed.          Kid

          nabbed.           Kidnapped.

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Now I am old enough that my friends have children.

The babies scream when their mothers turn

away for a moment—primal fear of loss.

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In the second dream             I follow my mother

          up the long spiral of a crumbling stone castle.

In one version          she stands outside

          helpless as a tower collapses around me.

In the other             I am frozen watching her

          buried beneath gray stones.      

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3. Stone

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Like stones I skipped a grade             and then another.

          When a skipped stone slows            it quickly sinks.

Does the stone feel             itself slowing?

          Does it know           when it sinks?

Did my mother skip me      because she knew

          how soon she would die?

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When I stopped            I thought I might die too

          stoned and moss-sunken.    

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The sea by San Francisco is filled with worn

          headstones of the forgotten.

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Stone comes from an old Germanic word

          meaning to stiffen.

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My father accuses me of being stiff

which is to say he does not like me with boundaries.

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After he remarried he kept my mother’s red

urn in the attic for years.

I thought of stealing ashes to wear around my neck

in a precious stone like a neighbor

who made her Siamese cats into a string

of diamonds one after another.

One day I was away he buried her

in my garden beneath a mound

of small white stones. He only told me

after the large cactus yellowed and died.

I avoided thinking about it for months.

Is it okay to replace the dead with living?

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