Mother Is a House

Father is a stump grinder,? a heavy planter. Shovel fingers? bulling through onions and leeks.? Truck-hands lashed to maroon suspenders.? Head in the dirt, a blue exhaust? trailing from grub-working teeth,? hefting clumps and yellow ***-ends,? raising clammy clay blooms.? ? Mother is a house,? most of it closed.? Sometimes an upper window opens.? net-curtains fly out of gray eyes.? A girl-ghost locked in a bottle,? ? She lifts me up on a dangle? of faith to her bedroom.? A mahogany night-dresser? tucks away her dreams.? She has closets, drawers? where lovers doze.? She whispers, less they all awaken.? ? Outside, father crashes through turnips.? Mother bleeds bitter-root? from nub bitten fingernails.? She pushes her child into rooms? called 'buried-lost, buried-found'.? The dead are everything –? she copes not with the living.? ? Later I listen to father grunt over her,? as he spades a blinded moon? between her broken fences.