My father is up at 6:30
in his bare chest and pajama bottoms,
whistling among the tomatoes,
brooding over the ruffled petunias
along the driveway wall. I watch him
through the screen door
where the morning has not yet
touched me, thin as a nightgown.
He looks like a circus man, performing
tricks too small for his muscles,
cross-pollinating petunias
with a tiny paintbrush, lifting
away their yellow powder.
Also he looks like a huge eye
down on the tiny mechanics
of the world. I watch his deliberate
move, his mingling of dust.
My mother is still in bed, soft as clay,
anonymous as sheets. She would get up
and start in on last night’s dishes,
if she had the energy.
It seems we have drawn it out
of her, that the sun is wrong to shine.
Her energy is out there, loose
barefoot in the garden, pajama strings
loose, careless of himself, careful
of the type: the Big Boy tomatoes,
the Hungarian yellow peppers.
He might be no one, in the flesh,
except for his green orchestration,
his rows. He whistles “Ode to Joy,”
getting it right, yes, this is it,
is it, ties each note on its trellis
to heaven. I stick out my tongue
against the bitter screen, to taste
whether I am a woman or a man, and
whose I am, and for what I was made.