It is 1953, and my mother stands,
in a calf-length woolen skirt,
red cardigan, white cotton blouse,
smiling down at her blue-blanketed
one-month-old. Behind her lies
a stack of lumber piled on dirt
that will stay dirt four years
before becoming grass, and behind that,
a cement-block foundation
above which rises a roughed-in frame,
the house my father, grandfather,
their friends and neighbors
are building for her, for me.
The sun is bright; she squints
toward the camera, trying to smile,
not knowing how long it will take
to raise a house (that once finished
will be too small too soon) or a son,
who once grown will betray
his immigrant roots to run away
and hardly ever write, forgetting
even the names of relations,
yet who will come to waste his time
obsessively fingering Ektachrome clues
to what once was and what,
once once, can never be again.