Thanksgiving, and: Reef, and: Pregnant Woman on the Beach, and: A Short Fable of the Year before Last

Thanksgiving

One glass of wine is good for you,Mother says. And three are too many.No one needs to leave the table crying.Salt takes out the stain.Or is it sugar?

The cat meows,plaintively, repetitively.Come in. Go out. Outside

the boundaries are clear.I listen hard to the hissof the sun's longing,red leaves etchedby that other brilliance, sky.

Reef

We have wet suits.We have our marriage in front of us,glittering. All the same,

I keep an eye on the boat,watch for water to rise,or fall. And what about sharks,

those hammerheads, harmless,you tell me. Your voice carrieson a turquoise wave. I'd like to be brave,

but it seems like a big decisionto make out here in the middle of nowhere.Underwater, with its promises,

its erratic light, your facelooks strange-closer than it really is,or farther away, I can't tell.

Only that the distance between usis not what I imagined.Escape is already populated

by bubbles of air you exhalemixing with bubbles I exhale,the churn of water as you move

sloshing into the churn as I move.Water changes to accommodate usand we are equally complicit in the change,

equally engulfed. Even my hand,held before my face, looks moody, detached.What are we coming into?

What are we leaving?On the bright linear beachmarshes smell like failure.

Pregnant Woman on the Beach

I can't tell what she's holdingin her hands, whether the children,gathered around her, hover in excitement

or fear. She's humming.How bad could it be? Please, nota fish, mangled, the bleeding mouth,

that desperate eye. I move closerand see a spider, ragged,map itself across her palms. My heart,

which had been thrumming alongin dark privacy, revels in attention,more than I can give. If I could be

her hands, that steady, her hair,self-contained in a coil around her head,but the future backs away, leaving me

jittery, hurried. The children loseinterest in the spider, run ahead.I call my children children,

though they're grown.I call them often, sometimesforgetting why. There are dangers,

many I can't name. Sunwashes color from her eyes,color I long for, or long to remember.

Clouds shift, exchanging likenesses.

A Short Fable of the Year before Last

All those different conversations,and white lilacs, that firstsummer riot. Then watermelon.No one would listen.Confusion grew.Children wandered offinto complicated gameswith ropes and knots.This or that husband found his wayto someone new. Likewise the wives.Day crumbled into its own kind of ruin.I tried to get everything settled.Should, the first-born, foughtin all its clamorous splendorfor top billing, but eventually had to admitothers grow up, too. Somewherea well digger found water.Bread in the ovens gave off fragrant peace.Abashed, should assumed its placein the list of what couldbe accomplished, what couldn't.