Revision

The scene is blocked from a source,

the tiny white‑bordered blur Michael

will display for scale in the revision.

Evening waits We bump and rub and fit

like pieces, restaging a fifteen‑year old photo,

forsythia now looming above us

Then it had been noon, a hard light

full of naivete, so beneath our little feet

we trampled the grass of our shadows.

Today the younger boys kneel down front,

and in the second row the girls appear

Sixteen‑wheelers scoff down the Beltway.

Four‑inch bolts, steel plates, half‑burnt flares

that had settled along its shoulder,

all fit in my childhood box in no order.

I was waiting for more bits or anything else.

Our mother waited for the siren chord

never come – curling woo‑woo

a glissando octave tides,

the taut phrase shattered by horn blasts –

music that meant her luck ran out.

I find my arm around my father.

As a young man he looked like Fred MacMurray

in Hands Across the Table with Carole Lombard.

MacMurray's eyes fill, and fill again,

with that sensible flash of abandon.

Too‑short hair and a jaw that knows it.

The poor manicurist acting like she doesn't

know he's waiting around to be found out.

The photographer says we are waiting for the flash.

This time, our shadows make the faces.

My father is an old movie to me now,

never saw it the first time around.

Now I can fall in love.

Now anybody sees what it meant.