On the porcelain tub back I dream of lofting: Designing a space for a wooden ship By a still
sill-thread (like sill-light under a lintel)
You walk wooden parapets at night
It is more careful
Never to leave the city.
Once here
Trust seaweed that is dark and scrub;
Barnacles will offer purchase.
When you were torn by war
I watched,
My sons safe,
My womb safely
Empty.
The day before you painted windows,
Boarded them against the chaos
They, who should not have disappeared,
Did
And my mother sent me to find them.
They, who had endured last night’s disaster
At the Benton Club (the fiancé hardly mattered)
As the future father-in-law on the upside of too many Jack Daniels’