What my mother loves is solitaire

and when her eyes start fading

to move about her house lights off

my brother is an orange

crate of records

on a car hood

playlist for silences ahead

my father is a plaid armchair that smokes

a tornado warning combs the elm

and after

my mother sets me adrift in the pool

with tennis racquet on yellow raft

to ferry small lives the storm washed in

identify by weight each feathered

furred alive or lifeless form

and dump out without decorum