Refuge
My mother painted a colorful jungle
on the upstairs balcony with a deer, bear,
lion, elephant, wolf, lamb and birds
looking at me as they flapped.
The Garden of Eden, she said, and let me
paint the black spots in each animal’s eyes.
She called the spots holes
for the soul to pass through, but I saw only
a tear left a trail down her face.
The grass in the yard yellowed, remained uncut
and blew in rivulets I would dance through
in bare feet, making a tunnel
to a hidden room of grass
my cheek could press into
as the leaves fell.
The clouds blanketed me with a damp scent
after the kids said I had the cooties.
In a tree hollow I found a piece of wood
and called it Adam. I sang to it
as I did to the clouds and the coal-blue
eyes of the tiger that stared down
from the mountainside just before
it started running toward me, then disappeared
at the moment I awoke, heart rising to the siren
that rang past my window.
The house wavered and breathed.
I saw my mother’s baby, the one
who died without a name, and my father
who’d survived the war, but whose silence
about the camp became the spray
of sparks and shriek of the train
that struck him when I was too young
to remember. When I asked where
he went, my mother said he was crossing,
and something flashed out her eye
clear as the eye of the Adam-stick,
the tiger and lamb that held me
transfixed, lost in my bed.
Today I found a half-broken egg
along the road with the unborn bird
still alive, the tiny pink arm
trying to claw its way out. It is
so thin between worlds — the one
in my hands so light
it is nothing I can ever touch.