"Apparition."
I'm carrying an orange plastic basket of compost
down from the top of the garden, sweet dark, fibrous rot,
promising, when the light changes as if someone slipped
a switch that does what?--
reverses the day.
Leaves chorusing, dizzy.
And then my mother says--
she's been gone more than 30 years, not her voice, the voice
of her in me--
You've got to forgive me.
I'm choked and sputter in the wild daylight, speechless
to that.
Maybe I'm really crazy now, but I
believe in the backwards morning I am my mother's son.
We are at last equally in love with intoxication.
I am unregenerate.
The trees are on fire, 58 years of lost bells.
I drop my basket and stand struck in the iron mouth
afternoon.
She says, I never meant to harm you.
Then the young dog barks down by the front gate.
He's probably gotten out, and she says calmly, clearly,
go take care of your baby.